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LIVES OF MISSIONARIES. 



GREENLAND. 



HANS EGEDE. 
MATTHEW STACK, 

AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF 
THE COMMITTEE OP GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, 
APPOINTED ET THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING 
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. 



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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE ; 

SOLD AT THE DEPOSITORIES : j 
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MEMOIR OF HANS EGEDE, 

THE NORWEGIAN MISSIONARY IN GREENLAND. 
1686—1758. 



" One man soweth, and another reapeth." 

Amongst the servants of Christ to whom it has 
been appointed to sow the seed but not to reap 
the harvest, few perhaps, in modern times, have 
had their faith and hope so severely tried as 
Hans Egede, the father of Greenland Missions. 

Hans (or John) Egede was born in Norway, 
in the year 1686. The simple, hardy habits 
which characterize the domestic life of the Nor- 
wegians early accustom the young to join in 
the occupations and sports of their elders, both 
on land and water. But the toils and pastimes 
in which Egede was allowed to participate did 
not lessen his fondness for reading : he was eager 
to acquire knowledge, and the long winter nights 
of the north afforded him abundant leisure for the 
pursuit of his favourite studies. His disposition 
had ever been loving and hopeful, ready to help 
and quick to sympathize ; and as his years ripened 
into manhood, it was seen that the love of God 



6 



HANS EGEDE. 



was the main- spring of his kindness to his neigh- 
bour, and the governing motive which was to 
actuate his life. He had remembered his Creator 
in the days of his youth, and heartily desired to 
spend all his days in serving Him. At the age 
of three-and-twenty he was appointed to the 
charge of the parish of Yogen, in the north of 
Norway; and it might well have seemed that 
this was the place in which his best hopes and 
aspirations were to receive their accomplishment. 
He had before him a life of labour, but it was la- 
bour which he loved ; he was the stay and comfort 
of aged parents ; and he had united himself to a 
wife who was every way worthy of him. And in 
spite of the anxieties and discouragements which 
must sometimes sadden the heart of every faithful 
pastor, Egede esteemed himself, and was esteemed 
by his neighbours, a happy man. But God had 
selected him for a post of greater trial and less 
cheering labour. 

It may be proper here to remind the reader 
that, at the period to which this narrative refers, 
the kingdoms of Denmark and Xorway were united 
under the government of the same sovereign. 
The reigning king, Frederic IV., had, a few years 
before, set an example of godly enterprise by 
establishing a mission for the conversion of the 
heathen at Tranquebar, in the East Indies. Some 
tokens of success were already cheering the hearts 
of the faithful men who had gone thither ; and 
the letters in which they narrated their proceed- 



COLONIES OF THE NORTHMEN. 



7 



ings, and described the manner in which the 
Gospel was received by the idolatrous natives of 
the country, were read with lively interest by 
pious members of the Danish Church, and found 
their way also into the sister-kingdom of Norway. 
Nowhere, perhaps, did these records of missionary 
labour awaken more interest and sympathy than 
in the secluded parsonage of Vogen. Eejoicing 
much that Christ was preached to the heathen on 
that distant Indian shore, Egede began to inquire 
if there was no way by which the same blessed 
message might be carried to the benighted men of 
other lands. 

The foreign dependencies of Denmark were few 
in number. Tranquebar in India, and some small 
islands in the West Indies, constituted the whole. 
In earlier ages, however, the men of Denmark and 
Norway had been amongst the most daring and 
successful of European adventurers and colonists. 
Spreading themselves east and west, north and 
south, they had conquered territories and king- 
doms, and had bequeathed to their descendants 
wealth and dominion in lands wider and more 
fruitful than their own. 

But Egede remembered that there had been 
one little colony of Norwegians whose history 
presented a melancholy contrast to that of their 
more favoured brethren. In the days of the Sea- 
kings, and about the same time that our own king 
Alfred was obliged to retreat for a while before 
the swarms of Northmen who invaded England. 



8 



HANS EGEDE. 



a company of Norwegians, led by Earl Ingolf, had 
taken possession of Iceland (a.d. 874). From 
thence, a century afterwards, Eric the Eed sailed 
out in quest of a new home, and discovered in the 
west an uninhabited country, which he called 
Greenland (982). A name which appears singu- 
larly inappropriate, since fields of ice, naked rocks, 
and snow- covered mountains are the most conspi- 
cuous objects which meet the eye of the mariner 
as his vessel nears the coast. Yet even on these 
ice-bound shores there are slopes and valleys lying 
beneath the shelter of the rocks, which the short 
arctic summer clothes with verdure. Birds innu- 
merable build amongst the cliffs and islets, rein- 
deer browse in the valleys, and herds of seals 
bask on the shore. It seemed a desirable land to 
Eric and to the companions whom he induced to 
share his fortunes. They established themselves 
on the west coast, gradually extending their 
settlements north and south as their numbers 
were increased by fresh colonists from Iceland 
and Norway. 

Hitherto the inhabitants of these countries had 
been heathens ; worshipping Thor and Odin, the 
gods of Scandinavia. But the Christian religion 
penetrated into Norway. The king, Olaus, ranged 
himself on the side of the believers, and being 
zealous for the extension of the faith which he had 
espoused, sent a Christian teacher to convert the 
Norwegians of Greenland. Eric listened, and de- 
clared himself a Christian, and most of the colo- 



THE SONS OF ERIC DISCOVER AMERICA. 9 



nists followed his example. His sons, bold, 
adventurous navigators, trod in their father's 
steps, and sailed from Greenland still farther to 
the west, to find a new territory. They reached 
the shores of North America, and spent the greater 
part of two years in a well- wooded country, be- 
lieved to have been a portion of what is now called 
Canada. The sons of Eric called it Wineland, be- 
cause of the wild grapes which grew in the forest. 
Hitherto they had encountered none of their own 
kind ; the birds of the air and the beasts of the 
wood appeared to be the only tenants of this 
goodly region. But in the third year, sailing 
farther to the north, they fell in with a diminu- 
tive dark-skinned people (evidently a tribe of 
Esquimaux), whom they called, in derision, 
Skroelings, or dwarfs. These newly converted North- 
men, though they had to a certain degree adopted 
the Christian religion, had learnt little or nothing 
of its lesson of peace and goodwill to all men. 
The scorn with which they beheld the Skroelings 
did not restrain them from more active mani- 
festations of enmity : they attacked and killed 
several in mere wantonness, and thus provoked 
a struggle with the whole tribe, in which the 
Norwegian leader was slain. 

Notwithstanding this inauspicious commence- 
ment, however, emigrants from Greenland, Ice- 
land, and Norway repaired to the newly dis- 
covered land, founded a settlement, and for a time 
prospered. Could they have lived in peace with 



• 



10 



HANS EGEDE. 



one another, the Wineland colonists might have 
become the fathers in America of a nation of Euro- 
pean origin, more than four centuries before the 
great discoveries of Columbus. But they were a 
fierce and quarrelsome race; and the progress of 
the new settlement was soon arrested by discord 
and bloodshed. Some of the survivors of these 
broils remained in the country, but the colony was 
dispersed, and Wineland ceased to be resorted to. 
In the following century, indeed, a zealous mis- 
sionary from Greenland undertook a voyage 
thither, in the hope of finding out the descendants 
of his countrymen, and converting them to Chris- 
tianity. But it does not appear that his bene- 
volent expedition was rewarded with any success. 
The ancient discoveries of the Northmen gradu- 
ally faded from recollection, and the fate of their 
American brethren was never certainly known. 
In this respect the history of Wineland was like 
a foreshowing of the doom which some centuries 
later awaited the Greenland Norwegians. 

During four hundred and fifty years Greenland 
maintained a regular, though infrequent, inter- 
course with Norway. A magistrate deputed by 
the king administered the civil government of the 
country ; and a succession of bishops, appointed 
by the Archbishop of Drontheim, presided over 
the Greenland Church. It paid also its annual 
tribute to the Pope ; not in money, which was 
very scarce in the colony, but in the ivory tusks 
of the walrus. Like their countrymen in Norway, 



THE BLACK DEATH. 



II 



tile people were hunters, fishers, and herdsmen ; 
but, unlike their enterprising forefathers, they 
concerned themselves hardly at all with navi- 
gation, the difficulties of which appear indeed to 
have increased as years rolled on. Enormous 
icebergs, floating along the coast, and often filling 
the inlets, had been seen with wonder by the 
first discoverers of Greenland ; but now the ever- 
accumulating belt of ice which had formed along 
the shore entirely blocked up, during many 
months of the year, the entrance of the fiords on 
the shores of which the colonists dwelt. Years 
occasionally intervened between the arrival of 
vessels from Norway. Yet, infrequent as was 
the communication of Greenland with the more 
civilized portions of the world, its remoteness did 
not exempt it from the awful scourge of the 
Black Death which ravaged all Asia and Europe 
in the middle of the fourteenth century. This 
dreadful pestilence was especially fatal to the 
inhabitants of Northern Europe. Not only men, 
but cattle fell beneath its baneful influence ; and 
even the vegetable world is said to have been 
blasted by its breath. A year before the Black 
Death appeared in Greenland, the colony had 
been visited for the first time by a party of 
Skrcelings or Esquimaux. The Norwegians, proud, 
like their fathers, of their superior strength and 
stature, and forgetting that God hath made of 
one blood all nations of men to dwell on the 
earth, contemned their dwarfish visitors, and drove 



12 



HAXS EGEDE. 



them away with insult. A skirmish ensued, in 
which the arrows of the feeble strangers proved 
fatal to several of their assailants. They retired, 
nevertheless, but returned in greater numbers 
some years afterwards, when the population of the 
colony, never very large, had been greatly thinned 
by the plague. Some of the most desirable valleys 
had lost all their inhabitants. Of these the new 
comers took possession, and gradually advanced 
upon the enfeebled Norwegians. The people of 
Norway had themselves suffered terribly from the 
plague. Absorbed in their own troubles, they 
ceased for some years to bestow any thought upon 
their brethren in Greenland. And when they 
renewed their intercourse with the colony, the 
times were not favourable. The crowns of Den- 
mark, Sweden, and Norway had fallen (1397) to 
the same sovereign, Margaretta, " the Semiramis of 
the North." The cares of three kingdoms left her 
and her successors little leisure to attend to the 
concerns of that small remote possession. About 
the same time several vessels freighted for Green- 
land by the merchants of Bergen, were suc- 
cessively lost by storms. Utterly discouraged, 
they at length abandoned the trade altogether ; 
and a rumour grew that all the people in Green- 
land had been exterminated by a hostile fleet, 
coming no man knew from whence. But although 
this report was not generally credited, one 
hundred years passed away, and nothing more 
was done to relieve the unfortunate colonists. 



ENGLISHMEN VISIT THE COAST. 



Then Walkendorf, the Archbishop of Drontheim, 
moved with pity for their forlorn condition, pro- 
jected the renewal of intercourse with Green- 
land ; devised means of providing the people with 
pastors, sought out suitable persons to emigrate 
thither as colonists, and collected all the infor- 
mation that could be obtained for the guidance of 
the mariners who were to take part in the enter- 
prise. Unhappily, Walkendorf fell into disgrace 
with his sovereign, and going into voluntary ba- 
nishment, died in a foreign land, and his benevo- 
lent schemes perished with him (1521). 

In the space of sixty years three kings in suc- 
cession formed plans for the recovery of their lost 
colony, and even began to fit out ships and make 
preparations for the undertaking; yet none of 
these projects were carried into effect. In the 
meantime, the English navigator, John Davis, in 
the course of three voyages which he made to 
search for "a north-west passage to India and 
Cathaye" (1585-1587), repeatedly visited the 
west coast of Greenland, where, however, he saw 
only Esquimaux, who willingly came to barter 
skins of seals, reindeer, and white hares for such 
things as his men had to give them. From this 
time English vessels often touched on the Green- 
land coast, and their representations of the profits 
which might be obtained by trading ships stirred 
up the Danish sovereigns to make a fresh attempt 
for the re-discovery of their ancient settlements. 
King Christian II. engaged an English seaman, 



14 



HANS EGEDE. 



experienced in the Greenland voyage, to pilot an 
expedition which he sent out for that purpose. 
The ships reached their destination safely, and 
saw several spots which appeared pleasant and 
fruitful, producing abundance of grass, brushwood, 
and berries. But the Danes alarmed and ex- 
asperated the Esquimaux, by making some of 
them prisoners, to carry them to Denmark ; and 
in their subsequent visits to the coast they found 
the people resolute in rejecting all intercourse, 
and prepared to repulse them if they attempted to 
land. Thus the object of the expedition was 
frustrated. Voyages to Greenland were under- 
taken by several succeeding monarchs ; but the 
ice prevented some of the ships from reaching 
the coast, and those which did so brought back 
no satisfactory information. At various times 
the Danes brought away some of the Esquimaux ; 
but as no one understood their language, it was 
impossible to obtain any information from them. 
The fate of these poor people was most unhappy ; 
some pining themselves to death with grief at the 
separation from their country and kindred, and 
some escaping from captivity by throwing them- 
selves into the sea. By the time the seventeenth 
century came to an end, the Danes had given up 
their researches in despair ; and very few even of 
the Norwegians themselves remembered that a co- 
lony of their countrymen and fellow-Christians had 
a home in Greenland in old times, and that some of 
their descendants might even now be living there. 



THIS LOBT COLONISTS. 



15 



Egede, however, musing upon the subject, 
began to ask himself what could have become of 
those poor forsaken people. Moved, as he sup- 
posed, by mere curiosity, he wrote to a friend who 
had made several whaling voyages to Davis' Strait, 
and begged that he would tell him all that he 
knew about the present state of Greenland and its 
inhabitants. The answer of his correspondent 
led him to believe that the men of Norwegian 
descent, long abandoned by their countrymen, 
and left without Christian teachers, had sunk into 
paganism. Egede knew that even in Norway, 
where the word of God was openly read in every 
parish church, fragments of heathen superstitions, 
handed down from the old idolatrous times, still 
survived in the rural districts, and affected in 
some degree the minds of the people. In Green- 
land it could hardly be hoped that the light of 
truth had ever shone so clearly as it now did 
in the parent kingdom, for intercourse with the 
colony had ceased long before the reformation of 
religion, at a time when the Gospel of Christ 
was overlaid and obscured by human traditions 
and inventions. He pictured to himself the 
remnant of Christian Greenlanders, gradually 
losing the little light which their fathers had 
possessed, mingling with the heathen who had 
taken possession of their deserted dwelling-places, 
and becoming by degrees altogether like them, 
without any hope on which to stay themselves in 
life or death. Deep compassion for these forlorn 



16 



HANS EGEDE. 



people now took possession of his heart. It 
seemed to him the duty of every Norwegian to 
do something towards searching out his unhappy 
countrymen, and publishing to them the glad 
tidings of the Gospel ; and his mind was con- 
stantly at work devising measures by which this 
charitable design might be accomplished. Soon 
the desire to be himself a messenger of salva- 
tion to those lost ones arose in his heart. But 
at this point many difficulties presented them- 
selves. God had already given into his charge 
a flock to feed and tend ; would it be right for 
him to abandon them ? Moreover, he had not 
only a wife and infant child whom he dreaded to 
expose to the dangers of the seas, but an aged 
mother and other near relatives depended on him 
for sustenance ; how would these be adequately 
provided for, if he were away? Perplexed by 
these thoughts, he endeavoured to drive Green- 
land quite out of his mind, or to remember it only 
in order to commit the objects of his compassionate 
concern to the pity and care of the Almighty. 

This, however, he found to be impossible. 
Urged to proceed in the work by an inward im- 
pulse which grew stronger every day, yet with- 
held by attachment to his parish, by care for his 
family, and by the fear lest he should be thrusting 
himself upon a work for which he was not qualified, 
he had no rest in his spirit. 

For many months his mental conflicts were 
known only to himself. To those around him 



GREENLAND MISSION PROPOSED. 17 

he appeared occupied, as ever, in the duties of his 
parish, in study, or in the kindly offices which 
gladdened the daily life of those who depended 
upon him. Encouraged at length by the zeal 
with which king Frederic promoted the mission at 
Tranquebar, Egede, in the year 1710, ventured to 
direct the attention of his superiors to the long- 
forgotten Greenland colony, in the hope that some 
of his brethren in the ministry, more conveniently 
situated and better qualified than himself, might 
be willing to seek out these poor sheep wandering 
in a land of darkness. He addressed to the king 
a memorial, in which he humbly, but with much 
earnestness, urged the claims of the Norwegian 
Greenlanders to the compassionate consideration 
of their countrymen. But, sensible that the pro- 
posals of a young unfriended man like himself 
were little likely to receive much attention from 
the rulers of the state, he sent copies of his 
memorial to his diocesan, the Bishop of Drontheim, 
and to the Bishop of Bergen, the port which was 
chiefly concerned in the trade with the northern 
seas, accompanied by letters entreating them to 
use their influence to recommend the case of the 
Greenlanders to the favourable consideration of 
the sovereign and the council. In answer to this 
appeal the bishops, having taken time to de- 
liberate on the subject, replied that they heartily 
approved of the object which Mr. Egede had in 
view, and would do their best to promote it ; but 
they pointed out various obstacles which must at 

c 



IS 



HAXS EGEDE. 



present impede any attempt to commence a mis- 
sion in Greenland. Egede himself had been 
aware of some of these, and in particular, that the 
war which the king of Denmark was then carry- 
ing on against Sweden might make it yeiy diffi- 
cult to provide money for any new missionary 
enterprise. But he hoped that this obstacle might 
soon be removed by the return of peace ; and feel- 
ing that he had done all that was possible tinder 
present circumstances, his mind was at rest. 

Soon, however, his tranquillity was disturbed by 
the expostulations, entreaties, and even reproaches 
of his own household. Hitherto he had said 
nothing to them on the subject in which he was 
so deeply interested. But his memorial, and the 
letters which he had addressed to the bishops, 
began to be talked about at Drontheim and Bergen. 
Some of his acquaintances who about this time 
visited the latter city, were amazed when they 
heard that their neighbour, the young minister of 
Vogen, had proposed a mission to Greenland, and 
was willing, if necessaiy, to take part in it himself. 
They reproached him vehemently with what they 
were pleased to call his foolhardiness, and setting 
before his wife and kindred, in the strongest light, 
all the privations, dangers, and distress which 
would attend their removal to a country so frigid 
and difficult of access, they urged them to inter- 
pose all their influence to prevent Mr. Egede from 
carrying into effect his preposterous scheme. 
Egede always looked back to this period of his 



egede's conflicts. 



19 



life as one of peculiar suffering. He was a man 
of strong affections, and the tears and entreaties 
of his wife and mother almost overcame his reso- 
lution. For a little while, indeed, they did suc- 
ceed in persuading him that he had been in error 
in supposing that it could be right for him to en- 
gage in such an undertaking. He even gave 
thanks to God for having delivered him from 
what he now believed had been a temptation of 
Satan, designed to divert his mind from the duties 
of his own charge. His family were greatly re- 
joiced at the change in his sentiments, and for a 
little while he was able to share their joy. But 
ere long the words of his Heavenly Master, 
" Whoso loveth father or mother more than Me is 
not Worthy of Me," pierced his heart like a sword. 
His wife observed his deep distress, and strove to 
soothe him, but in vain. Neither the endearments 
of his home, nor the most diligent discharge of his 
pastoral duties, could afford him any comfort 
until he felt that he had surrendered his own 
will in this matter to the will of God. But his 
wife's distress caused him much sorrow. She 
could not bear to hear Greenland mentioned ; and 
was unable to believe that it could ever be her 
duty to engage in a project which would separate 
her from her own mother and oblige her to expose 
her infant children to hardship and danger. 

Until this time Egede and his family had en- 
joyed much outward peace and prosperity. They 
were now visited with a succession of troubles, the 



20 



EGEDE. 



heaviest of which arose from the envy and ill-will 
of some persons from whom they might have hoped 
for better things. These trials and persecutions 
afflicted Mrs. Egede so deeply that she began to 
wish her husband might be removed to another 
parish. He exhorted her not to think so much of 
the mere outward causes and instruments of their 
troubles, but to regard them as the means by 
which God was weaning both her and himself from 
a home which they had loved too dearly, that they 
might become willing at His command to leave all, 
and go out into the wilderness. " He is saying to 
us, 4 Arise and depart : this is not your rest.' " 
Following her husband's counsel, Mrs. Egede 
brought her sorrows, fears, and perplexities to 
God ; and poured out her heart before Him in 
prayer. She received strength and comfort, and 
also the firm conviction that these trials were de- 
signed to animate her to a more resolute self-denial 
in the service of Christ. Henceforward, instead 
of opposing her husband's missionary plans, she 
encouraged him by her sympathy. He greatly 
needed it, for several years of delay and disappoint- 
ment awaited him. He might almost have taken 
for his motto, "I have great heaviness and con- 
tinual sorrow in my heart .... for my brethren, 
my kinsmen according to the flesh. " But he stood 
alone. He had hoped that some clergyman of 
wisdom and experience would offer himself for the 
mission. Diffident of his own ability to fill an 
untried and difficult post, he desired to labour iu 



UNPOPULARITY OF MISSIONS. 



21 



it under the direction of another, rather than to be 
left entirely to his own discretion. But no one 
appeared willing to engage in the work. A 
numerous party in the kingdom objected even to 
the maintenance of the mission in India, firmly 
established as it already was, and distinguished 
by marks of the Divine favour. The proposal to 
establish a mission in Greenland was by almost 
all men either ridiculed or condemned as imprac- 
ticable. 

In the year 1715, Egede published a small 
treatise in which he examined the various objec- 
tions alleged against his design, and proved their 
futility by arguments drawn from reason and 
Scripture. But if Egede's opponents were con- 
futed, they were not silenced ; and when they could 
no longer raise a laugh at the folly of his schemes, 
they were not ashamed to cast suspicion upon the 
purity of his motives. Although they had pre- 
viously reproached him with cruelty to his wife 
and children, in proposing to exchange comfort 
and competence at home for privation and danger 
in a strange and savage land, they now accused 
him of hiding a spirit of discontent under the cloak 
of religion ; and insinuated that his anxiety to esta- 
blish a mission in Greenland sprang from a desire 
to rise in the world, and not from any motives of 
piety or benevolence. He, however, held patiently 
on his way ; fulfilling with diligence the duties 
of his parish, but still pleading the cause of his 
Greenland brethren at every fitting opportunity 



22 



HA2hS egede. 



by letters and memorials addressed to persons in 
authority, and to the College of Missions, a council 
which the king had established for the direction of 
affairs relating to the Indian mission. But when 
seven or eight years had passed away without 
any advance being made, he perceived that he 
must prosecute his design in person if he would 
have it succeed. During the time which had 
elapsed since the desire to be a missionary first 
arose in his heart, his family circumstances had 
undergone a sufficient change to make it possible 
for him to give up his parish without injury to the 
relatives who had depended on his assistance, 
though not without impoverishing himself. 

But he saw that this sacrifice was required of 
him ; and in the year 1718, with the consent of his 
bishop, he resigned into other hands the parish 
of Yogen. The final parting with his flock, and 
with many dear friends and kindred who resided 
amongst them, was a very sore trial. His solicitude 
for the conversion of the Greenlanders had in no 
degree lessened his attachment to the people of 
his charge ; and when he was to preach to them for 
the last time, and to bid them farewell, he was 
almost overpowered with sorrow. Under God, his 
wife was his support now. She resigned the com- 
forts of home and the society of beloved friends 
with such a cheerful serenity and acquiescence in 
the Divine Will, that her husband was animated 
by her example, and inspired with fresh strength 
to persevere in his self-denying course. 



THE KING'S MISSIONAEY SCHEME. 



23 



One of the chief obstacles which might have 
prevented the King of Denmark from entering 
upon any new missionary enterprise, was at this 
time removed by the death of Charles XII. of 
Sweden, who perished by a random shot while 
besieging Fredericshall, in Norway : December 
11th, 1718. It was foreseen that peace, on terms 
honourable and advantageous to Denmark, would 
now be concluded. Egede seized the favourable 
moment, repaired to Copenhagen, petitioned the 
College of Missions on behalf of Greenland, and 
had an audience of the king, who listened atten- 
tively to his statements, and dismissed him with 
the gracious assurance that he would consider the 
matter with care, and endeavour to find some means 
of maintaining the proposed mission. 

Accordingly King Frederic devised a plan for 
settling colonists in Greenland, and establishing a 
regular intercourse between the colony and the 
mother-country, for which purpose a mercantile 
company was to be chartered. It appeared to him 
that this scheme might probably answer the double 
purpose of defraying the expense of the mission, 
and also of planting amongst the Greenlanders a 
civilized Christian community, from whose example 
they would learn some of the arts and refinements 
of life, at the same time that they were receiving 
from the missionaries the knowledge of the Gospel. 
And it was confidently hoped that by this means 
the ancient Norwegian settlements might not 
only be recovered, but restored to more than their 



24 



HANS EGEDE. 



former prosperity. A royal mandate was transmit- 
ted to the magistrates of Bergen, requiring them to 
examine the captains and pilots who had been en- 
gaged in the whale fishery on the coast of Green- 
land, in order to obtain all the information they 
could give for the guidance of settlers in that coun- 
try. The king desired also that any persons willing 
to join in founding the new colony would consider 
what privileges they would desire to have assured 
to them, and promised to grant every reasonable 
request. Egede was full of hope now, but it was 
quickly disappointed. Not one of the seamen who 
were examined by the Bergen magistrates had a 
good word to say for Greenland. They all con- 
curred in representing the voyage as so dangerous, 
and the country as so dreary, that the most sanguine 
adventurer could feel no inclination to become 
a colonist. Not long before, indeed, a report 
had reached Norway that the crew of a wrecked 
whaling vessel, who had escaped in a boat to the 
shore, had all been butchered and devoured by the 
savage inhabitants. And although this report was 
not altogether true, it was so in part ; and being 
fully credited at the time, the horrors of canni- 
balism were added to the other uninviting circum- 
stances of a residence in Greenland. Egede had 
one argument which to himself was a sufficient 
answer to every objection : " Our Lord has said, 
6 Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel 
to every creature. I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world.' If He be for us, who 



PEE SEVERANCE REWARDED. 



25 



can be against us ?" But this was not a consi- 
deration which had any weight with men who 
looked upon emigration to Greenland merely as a 
means of obtaining a comfortable maintenance. 
Egede, however, whose long consideration of the 
subject had led him, like the philanthropic arch- 
bishop Walkendorf, to seek for information of 
every kind concerning the country, knew that 
the merchants of other nations, the Dutch 
especially, derived considerable advantage from 
their trade with Greenland ; and why should it 
not be equally profitable to his own countrymen ? 
He failed not to press this question at every op- 
portunity on the mercantile men to whom he 
could procure access ; and though he met with 
many rebuffs and much ridicule at first, his inde- 
fatigable perseverance was at length rewarded with 
success. A few merchants were moved by his 
entreaties to venture something for the good of 
their country and the spread of the Gospel, and 
their example had its effect upon others. In the 
end it was determined to attempt a trading settle- 
ment in Greenland ; and a company was formed, 
each member of which contributed £40 and up- 
wards towards forming a capital. Mr. Egede 
himself gave £60 out of his small fortune ; and the 
contributions of the bishop and clergy of the 
diocese raised the sum to £2000 — a much larger 
amount in that age and country than a similar 
sum would be in our own. 

With this money a ship was purchased, and 



26 



HANS EGEDE. 



suitably equipped for conveying Mr. Egede and 
his companions to Greenland. It was named the 
4 Hope.' A factor, or manager, was appointed to 
conduct the trade ; and several artisans and per- 
sons accustomed to rural occupations were selected 
by the company to begin a settlement. Two 
smaller vessels were to accompany the 4 Hope ;' 
one for the whale-fishery, the other to return to 
Norway with tidings of their arrival and welfare, 
as soon as the settlers were fairly established on 
Greenland ground. Before the arrangements were 
quite completed, a joyful message arrived from the 
College of Missions, stating that the king had sig- 
nified his approval of the undertaking, and that he 
appointed Mr. Egede Minister and Missionary in 
the new colony, with a yearly salary of 60/. ; he 
had also given orders that 100/. should be pre- 
sented to him immediately for the outfit of him- 
self and his family. 

Eleven years had elapsed since Egede began to 
solicit the attention of his countrymen to the spi- 
ritual destitution of the Greenlanders. Many 
times during those years he had almost said, 44 All 
these things are against me !" and he tells us that 
he was sorely tempted to murmur against God, who 
had kindled in his heart an unquenchable desire to 
preach the Gospel in Greenland, and yet defeated 
every attempt which he made to carry the design 
into effect. But he was full of joy and gratitude 
now. On the 2nd of May, 1721, accompanied by 
his wife and four young children, he went on board 



DANGEKS OF THE VOYAGE. 



27 



the fi Hope,' and was presented to the seamen and 
emigrants (about forty in number) as the super- 
intendent of the future colony. But the ships 
were not able to leave the harbour until ten days 
afterwards. On the 12th May they finally departed 
for their destination, and for the first eighteen 
days were favoured with tolerable weather. On 
the 4th June they passed Staatenhuk, the 
south-eastern extremity of Greenland, and in- 
dulged the hope that their voyage would soon be 
at an end. The weather however changed, and 
became exceedingly tempestuous, and the ships 
encountered enormous quantities of ice. The 
whaler had parted company with them at the 
beginning of the voyage, and they saw her no 
more. She had been overset in a squall, but 
having righted again, with the loss of her masts, 
had been driven on the coast of Nor way : an in- 
auspicious beginning of the mercantile operations 
of the company. The ' Hope ' and her consort 
were beating about for three weeks, without 
drawing any nearer to their destination ; and the 
captain, despairing of a favourable termination to 
the voyage, had almost made up his mind to return 
to Bergen, when they descried an opening in the 
ice. But having ventured into it for some dis- 
tance, they found that they could advance no 
farther. They would gladly have got back now to 
the open sea, but the wind was contrary, and 
blowing with great violence. The smaller vessel 
was driven on the ice, and sprang a ]eak; and 



28 HA27S EGEDE. 

both ships were in imminent danger of destruction 
from the ice floes which drove violently against 
them. To add to their distress, a thick fog sprung 
up, and shrouded eveiy object from view. In this 




THZ '* HOPE " IX THE STCEM. 



extremity the captain of the 4 Hope ' bade his 
passengers prepare for death, which he expected 
every moment would overtake them. But they 
looked unto God, and were lightened. Unseen by 
them, His Providence was working out their de- 
liverance by the storm which appeared to threaten 
their destruction. It broke and dispersed the ice, 



LANDING OF THE SETTLEES. 29 

and when the veil of fog was lifted they found 
themselves, to their astonishment, in open water. 
Day by day the eyes of the emigrants were turned 
anxiously in the direction of their new country, 
but it was the 3rd July before they finally made 
the shore at Baal's Eiver, in lat. 64° N. The coast 
reminded them in some degree of the land which 
they had left, but only the sternest features of 
Norwegian landscape were to be seen here ; the 
numberless islets and rocks, the firths and inlets 
indenting all the shore, the majestic outlines of 
mountains in the background. But the snow, the 
glaciers, the bare sterile ruggedness of Greenland, 
told them that they were far indeed from their 
own magnificent coast, with its noble fiords, 
widening and narrowing in a thousand curves and 
channels — now enclosed between the mighty gra- 
nite cliffs, now opening into lake-like expanses 
where the shores smiled with verdure, and the 
cheerful farmsteads and pastures were inter- 
mingled with the wild crags, forests, and water- 
falls. 

Baal's Eiver (the name subsequently given by 
the colonists) is a creek or firth which runs into 
the land from sixty to seventy miles in a north- 
westerly direction. A cluster of islands, some 
hundreds in number, lies in its estuary, and on 
one of these, named Kangek, the emigrants erected 
their first dwelling, a house of stones and earth, 
lined with boards. On the 3rd of August it was 
completed, and after a short thanksgiving service, 



30 



HANS EGEDE. 



in which Egede exhorted his companions from the 
words of the 117th Psalm, they joyfully removed 
into it from their narrow quarters on board the 
ship. Although it was so early in the season, 
the nights were already very cold. The settlers 
erected also a blacksmith's forge, and other neces- 
sary buildings for their stores and workshops, and 
named the place Godhaab ; %. e., Good-hope. An 
Esquimaux encampment was seen on the neigh- 
bouring shore. The people were from four to five 
feet high, and had broad flat faces, coarse black 
hair, and a very swarthy complexion. They were 
clad in seal-skin garments from head to foot, and 
their tents were also of seal-skin. The proceed- 
ings of the Europeans were watched by them with 
much curiosity ; aud by their gestures they ex- 
pressed great surprise at seeing women and 
children amongst them. They were still more 
astonished when they perceived that the strangers 
were building a house, as if they intended to 
remain in the country : they made signs to them 
that their house would be buried under the snow ; 
they pointed to the sun, and to the horizon, 
shivered, closed their eyes, and laid their hands 
under their heads, intimating by all this that 
when the winter came they would be all frozen to 
death, and therefore had better take their depar- 
ture in good time, before the season of cold and 
darkness arrived. But when they found that 
their warnings produced no effect, they became 
afraid, retired to a more distant part of the coast, 



DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE ESQUIMAUX. 31 

and would not suffer the Europeans to come into 
their tents. Gifts and kind treatment allayed 
their fears after a time ; but several months elapsed 
ere they would admit the strangers into their 
houses, • or would venture to return their visits. 
It must be confessed that, excepting for the sake 
of doing them good, few Europeans would have 
desired to enter a Greenland house, or to admit 
the natives into their own. In the concise but 
expressive language of one of their early acquaint- 
ances, " their clothes dripped with grease and 
swarmed with vermin and their hands, faces, 
furniture, and cooking utensils were alike smeared 
with oil, dirt, and seals' fat. The houses in which 
they spent the greatest part of the year (the tents 
being only used for summer habitations) were long 
narrow huts of stone and turf, just high enough 
for a man to stand upright. Curtains of seal- skin 
served instead of walls to divide the dwelling into 
several small compartments, each of which shel- 
tered a separate family. There was no fire, but a 
lamp, supplied with filaments of moss for a wick, 
and fed with train oil, diffused heat and light 
around each compartment. Over each lamp hung 
the stone kettle in which the family meals, con- 
sisting chiefly of fish, blubber, and seals' flesh, 
were cooked. The seal was indeed the one inva- 
luable possession of these poor people, supplying 
them with food and clothing, dwellings and boats. 
And it was the daily employment of the women to 
tan and dress the skins, and to manufacture them 



32 



HANS EGEDB. 



into garments and articles of use and furniture. 
The intestines also they made useful, forming with 
them a close network which supplied the place of 
glass in the windows of their huts, admitting 
some degree of light, while it effectually excluded 
wind and weather. 

Egede took every opportunity of visiting the 
natives ; and as soon as he found out that " Una " 
meant What is this ? he said Una ? Una ! of every 
object he saw, and committed the answers to 
paper. In this way he learnt the names of many 
things, but in other respects his progress was very- 
slow at first. The pronunciation of the language 
was particularly difficult to Europeans, on account 
of the guttural r, which was sounded very deep 
in the throat, and often pronounced like h. A 
more serious difficulty arose from the nature of the 
language itself. The Greenland tongue was most 
copious in words expressive of common objects and 
occupations, distinguishing the slightest shades of 
difference by appropriate terms, but it had no 
words for abstract ideas of any kind. Words were 
provided with numerous affixes and suffixes (the 
whole number of inflections in each verb, for in- 
stance, amounting to one hundred and eighty), 
and many words were connected together, so that 
the natives could express themselves with strength 
and brevity ; but this peculiarity occasioned great 
trouble to the strangers who wished to learn their 
language so as to speak it with ease and fluency. 
Perceiving that a native named Arok had attached 



THE ANGEKOKS. 



33 



himself to one of the settlers called Aaron, on 
account of the similarity of their names, Mr. Egede 
left Aaron, with his own consent, amongst the 
Esquimaux for a few months; hoping that he 
might gain some knowledge of the language, and 
might ascertain from his hosts something of the cir- 
cumstances of the country, and especially whether 
they knew of other inhabitants of a race different 
from their own : for his heart yearned after the 
long-lost countrymen whom he had come so far to 
seek. Aaron, however, learnt very little from his 
native acquaintances, whose continued attempts at 
thieving irritated him so greatly, that he en- 
deavoured at last to reform them by blows. 
They in return fell upon him and beat him 
severely, taking away his gun, lest he should do 
them mischief with it. But afterwards, becoming 
afraid, they tried to soothe and coax him, en- 
treating, above all things, that he would not tell 
his Angekok, lest they should be punished. An- 
gekok, in the Greenland tongue, signified Wise Man. 
It was the name given by the natives to certain 
persons amongst them who assumed the office of 
diviner, or sorcerer, and of whom they stood in 
awe. Since the coming of the white men several 
Angekoks iad exhausted their spells upon them, 
and more particularly upon Mr. Egede, as he 
appeared to be the person in chief authority ; in* 
order, as they said, to bring evil upon the foreigners, 
and force them to quit the country. But seeing 
that their sorceries availed nothing, they gave 

D 



34 HANS EGEDE. 

out that Egede himself was a very powerful 
Angekok. 

During the first year the colonists were not 
very successful, either in their hunting or fishing. 




BLACK AUKS ON COAST IN THOUSANDS. 



The shores of Baal's Eiver were a great resort of 
reindeer, and there were many white hares, but 



EARLY DIFFICULTIES. 



both deer and hares were excessively shy. In 
February, when the frost became very severe, 
and the sea smoked like an oven, black auks 
flocked in thousands to the shore ; but their 
flesh was riot very acceptable to the Europeans, 
though better flavoured than that of the other sea- 
fowl. They had chiefly depended on the fishery 
for a supplement to the stock of provisions which 
they brought with them from Norway ; but for 
this year at least they found it less productive 
than the abundance of the seas in their own 
country had led them to expect. Seal-catching 
they were unused to, and they were moreover 
prejudiced against the use of seals' flesh as food. 
The extreme cold, which rendered it difficult to 
stir out of doors without having the hands and 
face frozen, the want of sufficient exercise, and 
the long-continued use of dry and salt provisions, 
induced a general listlessness and depression 
amongst the colonists, and several were attacked 
by scurvy. The factor found, much to his morti- 
fication, that the natives declined to barter their 
superfluous oil, skins, &c, for the goods he had 
brought from Bergen ; but that in the spring, 
when a Dutch ship passed Godhaab, and ran into 
the harbour, the people on board bought more in 
half an hour than he had been able to obtain from 
the Greenlanders during the whole winter. The 
reason of this was, that the Dutch, by many years' 
commerce with Greenland, had won the confidence 
of the natives, and knowing exactly what kinds of 



36 



HANS EGEDE. 



commodities were most acceptable to the Esqui- 
maux, they stocked their ships accordingly. 

May had now returned ; the earth was be- 
ginning to thaw, and though the snow still fell in 
frequent showers, the welcome light of the sun 
was only withdrawn for three hours out of the 
twenty-four. A profusion of mosses, grass, and 
various small herbs and flowers showed them- 
selves, and the invaluable scurvy-grass, which 
had sprung up beneath the snow, restored the 
health of the invalids. But the non-arrival of the 
ship which had been expected in the course of 
this month, with fresh stores of provisions and 
necessaries from Norway, occasioned extreme dis- 
content. Most of the settlers broke into murmurs 
against the minister for leading them to that 
dreary wilderness, and all declared their determi- 
nation to return to Norway by the ship 'Hope,' 
which had wintered at Godhaab. Egede was 
thrown into great perplexity and trouble. He 
could not remain alone in the country, with a 
wife and little children, to see them perish before 
his eyes ; yet he could not bear to think of aban- 
doning the work he had as yet scarcely begun, 
and of giving up that opportunity of publishing the 
Gospel in Greenland, which he had obtained by 
the unremitting exertions of many years. All 
he could obtain of the settlers, however, was to 
wait until June for the arrival of the store-ship. 
June came, and three weeks of it passed away, 
and still no ship arrived. The people now began 



WELCOME NEWS. 



37 



to collect all their goods, tools, &c, and to de- 
molish their habitations. With a very sorrowful 
heart Egede watched these preparations for de- 
serting the country, for he felt almost constrained 
to go away too. But his wife withstood this 
resolution with so much firmness that, as his 
narrative tells us, he even felt ashamed to "be so 
far her inferior in faith and courage. From the 
time of their arrival in Greenland, she had 
looked upon it as the place which God had 
appointed for her husband and herself, and with 
cheerful contentment made light of the privations 
and discomforts which they all had to endure. 
She was so firmly persuaded that the ship would 
arrive sooner or later, that she earnestly remon- 
strated with the people who were pulling down 
their houses, assuring them that they were giving 
themselves needless trouble. They laughed at 
the predictions of " the new prophetess but their 
incredulity was soon put to the blush. On the 
27th June the long-expected vessel entered the 
harbour, bringing abundance of provisions, and 
conveying to Mr. Egede the welcome assurance 
that the king intended to support the mission to 
the utmost of his power. 

Encouraged by these joyful tidings, Egede ad- 
dressed himself with fresh hope to the instruction 
of the natives. His little boys were already able 
to make themselves understood ; and although the 
pronunciation, which they acquired almost in- 
sensibly, was still extremely difficult to their 



38 



HAXS EGEDE. 



father, he had laid up a large stock of Greenlandic 
words, and thought that with the help of his chil- 
dren he might begin to discourse more freely 
upon religions subjects. Paul, the eldest of 
the boys, could draw a little, and his father 
directed him to sketch as well as he could some 
of the chief occurrences recorded in Scripture. 
Paul himself, describing in after-life these first 
pictorial attempts at missionary work, assures us 
that they were of the Tery rudest description ; 
but rough and imperfect as they might be, they 
answered in some degree their purpose, which 
was that of illustrating Mr. Egede's meaning 
when he attempted to relate to the natives the 
History of the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, the 
miracles of the Lord Jesus, His death, and resur- 
rection. The Greenlanders were pleased with 
anything in the shape of a story ; but the miracles 
by which Christ healed the sick and raised the 
dead found the quickest entrance into their 
minds ; and as Mr. Egede came to them in the 
character of a messenger from this mighty and 
beneficent Lord, they imagined that he too 
could do many wonderful works. Sick persons 
were frequently brought to him, with the request 
that he would blow upon them, for that was the 
way in which the Angekoks pretended to cure 
diseases. Egede was very careful to tell them 
that he was but a man like themselves : he could 
sometimes direct them (he said) to medicines 
useful for their sickness ; but God only, his 




EGEDE TEACHING EN ESQUIMAUX HUT. 



THE SICK BROUGHT TO EGEDE. 



41 



Maker and theirs, could cure them. They must 
look to Him for health and every good thing 
which they desired. After speaking thus, he 
would kneel down and pray for the sick. Several 
persons by whom he thus prayed, recovered, and 
the confidence of the natives in the good inten- 
tions of the missionary was greatly strengthened, 
so that they gladly received him into their houses. 
But when he tried to teach them that there were 
diseases of the soul as well as of the body, and that 
all men needed to be healed of that sickness, they 
had no ears to listen : or, if he prevailed on them 
to give heed to his words for a little while, they 
would presently answer, that it was very likely 
Europeans might have sick souls, but that Green- 
landers had no such sickness. Let the great God 
of whom he spoke give them healthy bodies, and 
send them plenty of seals, and they wanted 
nothing more. 

In order to gain more frequent opportunities of 
instructing them, and a more accurate knowledge 
of their character and customs, as well as of their 
language, Egede took his two boys with him, and 
lived amongst the natives during a portion of the 
second winter which he spent in Greenland. It 
required no little self-denial on the part of the 
father and his children to bear with patience the 
many annoyances of such a situation. The strong 
rancid smell of the train-oil burning in the 
lamps, and that of the fish and blubber boiling 
in the kettles, the odour of half-putrid seals' flesh 



42 



HANS EGEDE. 



(esteemed a most delicate viand), the sickening 
effluvia of the skins which the women were tan- 
ning, constantly pervaded the huts, and rendered 
the atmosphere almost unbearable. The general 
dirtiness of everything and everybody has been 
already alluded to ; the food was no exception. 
It was cooked and served up without the slightest 
regard to cleanliness, and torn in pieces with 
the teeth and fingers. If the natives wished to 
show particular honour to their visitor, they pre- 
sented him with a piece of meat or blubber 
from which they had carefully licked the dirt, 
and the refusal of this inviting gift was regarded 
by them as a great affront. Notwithstanding all 
these unpleasant circumstances, however, Mr. 
Egede laboured patiently and indefatigably 
amongst them ; and his children, who had caught 
something of the spirit which animated their 
parents, endured good - humouredly the many 
things which they did not like. They soon made 
companions and playmates of some of the Green- 
land children, and by constant intercourse with 
them became quite familiar with their language. 
They were able now to help their father to 
translate some portions of the Gospels. The 
Greenlanders were at first much afraid when he 
read to them, thinking that he used some kind 
of witchcraft, and heard a voice proceeding from 
the book though they did not ; and it was long 
before they would venture to touch a book or 
a piece of paper with writing on it. But when 



"CARRYING A VOICE." 



43 



they saw that no harm happened to them from 
contact with these formidable things, their fears 
were succeeded by great admiration, and they 
esteemed it an honour to carry a letter for any of 
the settlers; " carrying a voice," they called it. 

The missionary observed no trace of religions 
worship amongst them, excepting that the hunters 
sometimes, on returning from the chase, laid a 
piece of the first reindeer which they had killed 
on a block of stone, to insure (they said) success 
on a future occasion. They calculated the seasons 
with tolerable accuracy, by observing the times at 
which the eider-fowl brooded, and the seals, fishes, 
and birds returned to their customary haunts. 
In the summer they divided the days according to 
the shadow cast by the sun on the rocks and moun- 
tains ; and in the winter they distinguished the 
time by the rising and setting of certain stars. Some 
of their notions about the heavenly bodies were 
rather poetical, and they gave names of their own 
to the more conspicuous constellations. Thus 
the Great Bear was called " Tukto " — the reindeer ; 
the Pleiades were dogs hunting a bear the whole 
night through ; Orion was Sirktuk— the Bewildered 
Ones ; that constellation consisting of certain seal- 
hunters, who lost themselves on their way home, 
and were changed into stars. They computed 
with sufficient exactness the time of the winter sol- 
stice, and celebrated it by a great feast in honour 
of the sun, to attend at which the natives assembled 
together from distant places, as to a fair, bringing 



44 



HANS EGEDE. 



with them eider-down, skins, horns of the nar- 
whal, and especially vessels of weichstein, a soft 
smooth stone of which the Greenlanders made 
their lamps and kettles. The days were devoted 
to traffic ; the nights, which the brilliancy of the 
stars and the light of the moon, reflected by the 
ice and snow, rendered bright as day, were spent 
in feasting and dancing, reciting the exploits of 
their ancestors in the seal-hunt, and singing songs 
of joy because the sun was about to return. But 
there was no act of worship. After Egede had 
become much more intimately acquainted with 
the people, he learnt that their forefathers had 
rendered honour to a Being who lived above the 
clouds, and that they themselves believed in 
the existence of a Spirit pervading all things 
in Heaven and earth, whom they called Silla. 
They believed also in a great multitude of lesser 
spirits, good and evil ; but especially in one who 
was both good and powerful, and whom they 
called Torngarsuk. But they thought it not worth 
while to pay him any religious worship, alleging 
that he was too benevolent a being to require to 
be entreated to do them good. Of their own 
natural condition, as sinful, and exposed to the 
anger of a Holy, Almighty Creator, they had not 
the smallest apprehension. 

Although there was much that was disagreeable 
and even disgusting in their household economy, 
Egede could not help admiring the quietness with 
which in general they carried on their daily 



OCCUPATIONS OF THE NATIVES. 



45 



occupations • each family in the narrow compart- 
ment allotted to them, without intruding on their 
neighbours, or quarrelling among themselves. 
They were rarely idle ; to the women, indeed, 
idleness would have been scarcely possible, for 
they were at once the butchers, cooks, sempstresses, 
tanners, tailors, shoemakers, and builders of the 
community ; the men concerning themselves only 
with hunting and fishing, and the manufacture of 
the necessary implements, in which they displayed 
great ingenuity. The missionary hoped at first that 
their usually quiet and inoffensive deportment arose 
from natural kindness and gentleness of heart ; 
but when he had resided longer in the country, 
he was compelled to take a far less favourable 
view of their character. Its most pleasing feature 
was the strong affection which the parents enter- 
tained for their children. While young, they 
would scarcely suffer them to go out of their sight ; 
and instances were known in which, the child 
having been drowned, the mother had destroyed 
herself, unable to endure the anguish of her be- 
reavement. But the strength of their parental, 
and in many cases, of their filial affection, was 
strangely contrasted with their hard, careless 
indifference to the sorrows and sufferings of per- 
sons less nearly connected with them. Egede had 
admired their readiness to entertain strangers, but 
he discovered that this apparent hospitality rarely 
proceeded from other than selfish motives ; they 
literally gave to " receive as much again," and to 



46 



HANS EGEDE. 



the needy were extremely ungenerous. Orphans, 
and widows whose children were too young to be 
serviceable in seal-catching, rarely met with 
assistance and compassion. On the contrary, they 
were commonly plundered of their most valu- 
able goods as soon as their natural protector was 
dead, and after protracting a miserable existence 
as long as they could by means of fishes, mussels, 
and sea-weed, fell victims to cold and starvation. 
Often, when a kayak was overset at sea, the people 
on shore would stand and look on with the utmost 
unconcern if its occupant was not a friend of 
their own ; they could even amuse themselves 
with watching his struggles as he vainly buffeted 
with the waves, and would rather see him sink 
and perish before their eyes than take the trouble 
of putting off in another kayak to save him. In 
these and other respects a wonderful and beauti- 
ful change of character was observable when the 
light and love of the Gospel was shed abroad 
in the hearts of the Greenlanders. But there 
was yet a long time to wait for that day of 
blessing, and Egede, labouring still in patient 
hope, looked in vain for the first streaks of the 
dawning. 

At times they resented the endeavours of the 
missionary to teach them, and would interrupt 
him by their noisy merriment, or turn what he 
said into ridicule. Some of the colonists, incensed 
at these impertinences, threatened to chastise them 
severely ; but Egede preferred the milder method 



PATIENT LABOURS. 47 

of forbearance and friendly expostulation, and 
effected so much that the Greenlanders entirely 
desisted from their unseemly interruptions, though 
hearing they heard, and did not understand. He 
had invited two orphan lads to come and live with 
him, and by dint of man}?- presents and much kind- 
ness prevailed on them to begin to learn to read 
and write. Seeing, however, that a quiet life, 
such as Europeans led, was very irksome to them, 
he did not forbid their going to sea, or visiting 
their native acquaintances when they desired to 
do so ; but notwithstanding this freedom, they 
soon became tired even of the slight degree of re- 
straint which their new occupations imposed upon 
them, and objected that there was nothing to be 
gained by looking on a book or making marks 
upon paper with a feather, whereas they could get 
both food and amusement by catching seals and 
shooting birds. Mr. Egede took great pains to 
set forth the advantages of being able to read and 
write, that men could thus know the thoughts Ox 
an absent friend, and as it were speak to him , 
and, above all, that by this means they might learn 
the goodness of God and His will from the Bible. 
But these were benefits which they had no desire 
to enjoy, and as soon as they had obtained every- 
thing that they wished for, they stole away with- 
out telling the missionary that they were going. 
Several persons asked him to take them in for a 
time, and though this was very inconvenient to 
himself and his wife, who had little more room 



48 



HANS EGEDE. 



than they needed for the accommodation of their 
own family, they would not refuse, for they hoped 
that their unbidden guests might gain some good 
from living in a Christian household. Sometimes 
as many as eight or ten Greenlanders would take 
up their abode at Godhaab ; but their motive for 
coming was only that they might be comfortably 
provided for while the season was not favourable 
for hunting and fishing. They listened, indeed, 
while Egede endeavoured to teach them out of 
the Scriptures, and some of them could even 
answer correctly several questions relating to 
Christian doctrine ; but not one appeared to have 
the least real understanding or feeling of the 
truths which their lips uttered. And when they 
had received food and shelter as long as they 
desired, they took their leave. 

The winter proved to be the time in which Mr. 
Egede had most opportunity of pursuing his mis- 
sionary labours. From time to time the company 
of merchants at Bergen, and also the king, sent 
directions that the country should be explored, in 
order to find out the dwelling-places of the old 
Norwegians, and to plant new settlements in the 
spots which seemed most favourable for hunting 
and fishing ; and the labour of planning and con- 
ducting these voyages of discovery fell principally 
to the lot of Egede, as superintendent of the 
colony. Often, therefore, during the short sum- 
mer he was obliged to leave his family at God- 
haab, while he accompanied exploring parties to 



THE COUNTRY EXPLORED. 49 

various parts of the coast, His first object was to 
find out a more suitable spot for the Godhaab set- 
tlement on the mainland, and where the ground 
admitted of cultivation. South of Baal's Eiver 
he passed under a lofty three-peaked mountain, 
visible from one hundred miles at sea, and enti- 
tied ("Hiorte Tuk ") The Stag's Horn ; and beyond 
this came to a fine creek, where there was great 
abundance of herbage and brushwood, a salmon 
Elv or brook, and excellent pasturage. The colo- 
nists named this place Priester Fiord (the Priest's 
Firth), and were well pleased to remove to so ver- 
dant a valley. But after they had dug stones, and 
made preparations for building, they were obliged 
to desist, for the creek proved too difficult of en- 
trance to be safe for ships. Close by the mouth 
of this fiord there was another, on the shores of 
which both seals and reindeer were seen in abun- 
dance ; and here Egede discovered the first traces 
of his lost countrymen, the ruins of ancient Nor- 
wegian villages. The remains of the churches 
were easily distinguished ; they had evidently 
been very solidly built of the freestone which was 
plentiful in that neighbourhood. In other places 
similar remains were found from time to time. 
Ascending Baal's Eiver, to view a spot where the 
Greenlanders informed him seals might be killed 
by hundreds, Egede came to a very pretty valley, 
in which stood the lower portion of a square 
tower, and a large long heap of ruins near it, 
which appeared to be the remains of the church 

E 



50 



HANS EGEDE. 



where, four hundred years before, the inhabitants 
of the valley had assembled to worship God. 
Many lesser buildings were met with ; and the 
ground was thickly clothed with grass, and over- 
grown with dwarf elder-trees, birch, willow, and 
juniper. The bright blossoms of the creeping 
crimson azalea, and many small but beautiful wild 
flowers, enlivened the scene, and looking sea- 
wards, it appeared as pleasant a spot as man 
might hope to find in those far northern regions. 
But the prospect on the land side presented a 
dismal contrast ; it was a waste of ice stretching 
as far as eye could reach. In succeeding years, 
Egede and other Europeans, going farther towards 
the south, discovered many such places, and found 
traces of cultivation. Fragments of earthen ves- 
sels, bones, and many pieces of the bells which 
had once called the people to public worship, were 
picked up amongst the ruins and herbage. But 
of the people themselves, none remained. Those 
children of his countrymen whom Egede had been 
so desirous to succour had long since passed away 
from the face of the earth. How they perished 
could never be known ; but the tradition of the 
natives respecting their disappearance was pro- 
bably not far from the truth ; though the hereditary 
hatred of the Esquimaux for the enemies of their 
ancestors had invested the story with supernatural 
features, as that the Kablunaet (or foreigners) were 
dogs transformed into the likeness of men. The 
forefathers of the Esquimaux, whom they proudly 



THE COUNTRY EXPLORED. 



51 



termed Innuit, that is, Men, were brave hunters ; but 
they were treated with contempt by the Kablunaet, 
and in revenge they waged war against them, and 
after a long while destroyed them all. In Denmark 
it was long supposed that more important remains 
of the ancient settlements existed on the east coast, 
and Mr. Egede was early directed to send some 
resolute sailors to explore that part of the country. 
Being much * concerned to see this commission 
faithfully executed, he set out himself with two 
shallops, and reached Staatenhuk. But the voyage 
proved difficult and dangerous ; and the seamen 
were so alarmed by the tempestuous weather that 
the missionary could not prevail on them to ad- 
vance any farther. Soon after returning from this 
expedition he accompanied a party northwards, 
to seek a good situation for the whale fishery. He 
was able, though not at the first attempt, to 
accomplish this object ; but the season was 'un- 
usually rigorous, and the missionary and his com- 
panions did not reach home again until after 
several weeks of excessive fatigue and exposure 
to the piercing cold, the ice having blocked up 
the sounds, and extending also in immense fields 
over the open sea. Many stations of Greenlanders 
were visited in the course of these expeditions. 
At first they were afraid of the foreigners ; but 
when the native pilot who accompanied them told 
his countrymen that the great Angekok of the 
Kablunaet was with them, they received the ex- 
plorers with singing and shouts of joy, and followed 



52 



HANS EGEDE. 



them from place to place, hoping to see some won- 
derful thing done. They even conducted the mis- 
sionary to a grave, begging him to raise the corpse 
which it contained. At another place a blind 
man was led in by his friends, to have his sight 
restored. Egede, however, perceived that this 
was not a case which required the exercise of 
miraculous power, and having exhorted the man 
to trust in God only to make the means he was 
going to use effectual for his cure, he applied to 
the eyes something which he thought would do 
them good. Several years afterwards the man 
came to Godhaab to thank the missionary for 
having restored his sight. 

In the summer of 1723, Mr. Egede was joined 
by another missionary, Albert Top, who ministered 
to the colonists at Godhaab in his absence, and also 
applied himself very diligently to learn the native 
tongue. Egede had already prepared as well as he 
could some helps for his fellow-labourers and suc- 
cessors, and he improved them from time to time as 
his knowledge of the language increased. He drew 
up a translation of the Creed, the Ten Command- 
ments, and some short prayers in Greenlandic ; he 
also prepared some short easy lessons in Scripture 
truth, illustrating them by similes and parables, a 
mode of instruction which he perceived to be par- 
ticularly acceptable to the natives. They were 
greatly pleased to hear of the soul's immortality, 
and of the resurrection. They had received from 
their Angekoks various descriptions of the future 



MANNER, OF TEACHING. 



53 



state of the soul ; some affirming that it succes- 
sively inhabited several bodies on earth; and 
others, that it went to a happy hunting-ground, 
covered with everlasting verdure, and peopled 
with animals innumerable ; but this pleasant 
world, they asserted, could only be reached by 
a rough and painful journey. They listened 
eagerly while Egede spoke of the resurrection, 
when soul and body should again become one, 
never more to be separated ; and were delighted 
to hear of that fair land where there would be no 
more cold, or darkness, no hunger, sickness, 
sorrow, or death. But of the crowning happiness 
of Heaven, that there is no sin there-— they had no 
appreciation whatever. When they had become 
tolerably familiar with the subjects on which the 
missionary discoursed to them, they would say, 
44 We believe all that — tell us something new." 
They were surprised and angry when he assured 
them that indeed they believed it not, or they 
would be quite differently affected by it: they 
would stand in awe of the Holy, Almighty, and 
Most Merciful God who had made them : they 
would see that they were sinful men before Him ; 
would be sorry and ashamed, and would long to 
have their sins forgiven, and their hearts so 
changed that they might please Him, and obey all 
His commandments. One day when Egede was 
speaking of the command which the Lord Jesus 
gave to His disciples, that they should go and teach 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the 



54 



HANS EGEDE. 



Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, 
the whole company nocked about him, desiring to 
be baptized ; and were astonished that he refused. 
He had but too many proofs that their readiness 
to hear the doctrine which he preached, and to 
profess their belief in it, was only prompted by 
motives of covetousness : they desired to recom- 
mend themselves to the missionary and his coun- 
trymen, that they might share more largely in the 
gifts and advantages which the Europeans had to 
bestow. The Angekoks, who saw plainly that, if 
the doctrine preached by Mr. Egede were generally 
believed, their craft would come to an end, were 
foremost in stirring up opposition and ridicule. 
Yet when great trouble overtook them they could 
not help betraying their belief in the God of the 
missionary. An Angekok whose child was very 
sick, brought it to Egede, that he might ask his 
God to cure it. The missionary saw that the 
infant was dying, and told the father so ; but he 
added, if you will suffer me to give up your child 
to God, He will receive it, and will give it a better 
life in Heaven. The man assented, and Egede bap- 
tized the little one, who breathed its last shortly 
afterwards. When the parents had mourned for 
it, after the manner of the Greenlanders, with loud 
cries and wailings, they entreated the missionary 
to carry it to the grave, for the father thought no 
one else was worthy to do so now. He willingly 
complied with their request, and interred the poor 
babe as a member of the Christian family, with a 



NATIVE YOUTHS VISIT DENMARK. 55 

feeling of thankfulness that it was placed beyond 
the reach of harm. When the funeral was over, 
the Angekok and his wife desired to be baptized 
too. He explained to them that they, being able 
to understand the Word of God, must believe it 
heartily, and be willing to give themselves up to 
the service of Christ, and then he would joyfully 
baptize them. But this saying was too hard for 
them, and they went away. 

Amongst the natives whom Egede had received 
at Godhaab with much kindness, and whom he 
had instructed in the Gospel as far as he had 
opportunity, were two youths who became so 
friendly with the Europeans, that they were 
willing to go to Denmark by one of the ships 
which visited Godhaab. He promoted this visit, 
in the hope that their minds would be opened and 
quickened by the sight of so much that was new, 
and that they would on their return convey to 
their countrymen a clearer notion of European 
life and civilization than the Greenlanders would 
ever obtain from the conversation of foreigners. 
One of these young men died at Bergen, on his 
way home ; but the other, whose name was Poek, 
returned after a year's residence in Denmark, to 
astonish his countrymen with his account of the 
royal state of the king, and the splendour of his 
court, of the great buildings of the city of Copen- 
hagen, the fine ships, and the multitude of soldiers 
he had seen. He had been very kindly entertained, 
and had brought back with him many valuable 



56 



HANS EGEDE. 



presents, which pleased his countrymen. But the 

description of the king's military power struck 
them most forcibly ; for hitherto they had es- 
teemed the man who could catch the most seals 
as the greatest and mightiest lord on earth ; and 
when they heard from Poek that the monarch 
who possessed all this wealth, and had so many 
thousand fighting men at his command, listened 
respectfully to his pastors, though they were his 
own subjects, when the}' declared to him the will 
of the Almighty, the natives began to forni some 
new and awful ideas of the greatness of God. 

Pleased, however, as Poek had been with Den- 
mark, he quickly relapsed into the Greenland way 
of living, and even meditated a migration towards 
the south, where he would have been quite out of 
the way of instruction. After many expostula- 
tions he was prevailed on to remain and settle at 
Godhaab ; but his European friends as well as 
himself were obliged to plead for his acceptance 
with the young woman whom he proposed to 
marry, so averse was this Greenland damsel to 
take for her husband a man who had degraded 
himself by his outlandish way of living. It may 
be observed, in passing, that the Greenlanders 
had a remarkably high opinion of themselves ; 
when they wanted to express high approbation of 
a foreigner, they would say, " He is almost as well 
behaved as we are or, " He begins to be a man," 
meaning a Greenlander. 

After Poek and his companions had departed to 



NATIVE PUPILS. 



57 



Denmark, Mr. Egede took two younger lads into 
his family. They were of promising disposition 
and good capacity, and he hoped by God's blessing 
to train them up to be teachers of their country- 
men. One of them died while still very young ; 
the other grew up a thoughtful, docile youth, and 
became a useful helper in the work of the mission. 
After a year's residence at Godhaab, he accom- 
panied Mr. Egede's colleague to the spot selected 
for a whaling station on the island of Nepisene ; 
where, after careful instruction, he was baptized 
by the name of Frederic Christian. 

The charge imposed on Egede, of rendering the 
colony profitable in a mercantile point of view, 
greatly added to his labours and anxieties. The 
colonists were still but very moderately successful 
in their trading, hunting, and fishing pursuits. 
Egede tried the experiment of cultivating the 
ground in several places. He thawed the earth 
to a sufficient depth by setting the long grass 
which covered it on fire, and then sowed the grain, 
which grew very well till it was in ear, but was 
invariably destroyed by night frosts before it had 
time to ripen. He also caused search to be made 
for ores and minerals ; but although Greenland is 
by no means wanting in these, nothing could be 
obtained which was commercially valuable. The 
settlement at Nepisene proved another source of 
disappointment. As soon as the winter was over, 
Mr. Egede made a voyage thither, and found all 
the people in good health, though they had as yet 



58 



HANS EGEDE. 



done little or nothing in fishing, owing, they said, 
to the extreme severity of the weather. But the 
men who had emigrated to Greenland were not, for 
the most part, well suited for the career they had 
chosen ; and when they found that they must labour 
as hard as at home, and endure more hardship if 
they wished to prosper, they became discontented. 

The summer had no sooner set in than the 
colonists at Nepisene, instead of exerting them- 
selves to turn the season to account by diligent 
attention to" the fishery, determined with one con- 
sent to abandon the settlement. A ship bringing 
stores and provisions from Norway arrived just at 
this time ; but the people were so bent upon re- 
linquishing their undertaking, that this seasonable 
supply of their wants had no effect upon them ; 
and to the extreme grief and vexation of Mr. 
Egede, they returned in this very ship to Godhaab, 
pleading as an excuse that the provisions were not 
in sufficient quantity to last for twelve months. 

The trouble and expense laid out in the pre- 
ceding year upon the buildings at Nepisene, which 
had been constructed with materials brought from 
Norway, were thus entirely thrown away; and 
soon afterwards news arrived at Godhaab that 
the Dutch, or other foreign traders, had wantonly 
destroyed the whole. Egede could not but fear 
that the company of merchants would soon grow 
weary of an undertaking which had hitherto proved 
so unprofitable ; for not only had much money been 
wasted upon the Nepisene settlement, but several 



DANGEKOUS CONSPIRACY. 



59 



vessels despatched by the company to Godhaab had 
been wrecked or driven back by storms. 

For the present, however, the minds of the 
missionaries and their companions were occupied 
by apprehensions of an evil nearer at hand. 
During a trading voyage to the south, the factor, 
Jentoft, encountered an Angekok who was practis- 
ing his magical arts against him and his people. 
Irritated by the man's impostures and insolent 
demeanour, he was so indiscreet as to strike him. 
The enraged Angekok instantly seized his bow 
and arrows, but was restrained by his countrymen 
from attempting any violence at that time. By 
the factor the circumstance was quickly forgotten ; 
but the Angekok, longing for revenge, formed 
a plan for cutting off all the Europeans in the 
country. He had obtained by his reputed suc- 
cess as a magician, great influence over his coun- 
trymen in the south ; and by promising them the 
plunder of the strangers, and representing that it 
would be easy to destroy them when divided into 
small parties, he easily induced a considerable 
number of the natives to engage in the plot. It 
was known that the factor, with part of the people, 
would soon be proceeding to the north; his as- 
sistant, with another party, would be engaged in 
a trading voyage southwards ; and but a few men 
would be left with the missionary at Godhaab. 
The conspiracy might probably have succeeded, 
had it not come to the knowledge of a Greenland 
boy, whom Egede had taken into his service 



60 



HANS EGEDE. 



some time before. Not liking the restraints im- 
posed on him in a civilized household, he had run 
away, and migrated with some of his people to 
a distant part of the coast. Here he heard the 
plot talked over, and was sufficiently shocked and 
alarmed by it to steal away from his companions, 
and return secretly to Godhaab, where he revealed 
all to the missionary. Egede immediately set a 
watch to patrol the settlement day and night, 
and took all other precautions which were in his 
power, until the return of the factor from the 
north relieved him of a portion of his anxieties. 
He was still, however, not a little disquieted by the 
protracted absence of the factor's assistant ; but he 
too returned in safety, having been unusually de- 
layed, and warned repeatedly by friendly natives 
not to have any dealings with their countrymen 
at certain places on the south. The Angekok, 
rinding the Europeans on their guard, had been 
obliged to forego his proposed revenge for the 
present at least ; and he being afterwards captured 
by the factor, his adherents were effectually intimi- 
dated. He was not, however, punished otherwise 
than by imprisonment : and on making submission, 
with promise of good behaviour for the time to 
come, he was set at liberty. No sooner were their 
fears on this account dissipated, than the settlers 
found cause for apprehensions of another kind. 

The accustomed yearly supply of provisions had 
not yet arrived from Norway, though the season 
was far advanced. The watchers, looking out 



SCARCITY OF FOOD. 



61 



anxiously day by day for ihe store-ship, were 
alarmed at observing the wreck of a vessel, sur- 
rounded by quantities of ice, driving near the shore. 
Fearing that this might be the ship which had 
been loaded with provisions, and that possibly no 
other might reach them that year, Mr. Egede 
went one hundred leagues northwards, to the 
rendezvous of the Dutch whalers, hoping to pur- 
chase food from them. The Dutchmen, however, 
were bound for the American coast, and expecting 
to be several weeks at sea, were afraid to part with 
more than a very small portion of their stock of 
food. For a short time the colonists were almost 
in a state of famine ; eight persons being obliged 
to put up with the allowance of one. They tried 
to obtain seals from the Greenlanders, to boil with 
their oatmeal ; but the natives, with their usual 
selfishness, took advantage of their needy con- 
dition, and refused to sell them any. Happily the 
scarcity did not continue long. Late in the year 
a vessel arrived, having on board ample supplies ; 
but the captain informed them that a ship previ- 
ously despatched had been wrecked ; and his own 
progress had been so much impeded by the ice, that 
he would not venture back to Norway until the fol- 
lowing spring. By this time the merchants at 
Bergen were, as Egede had foreseen, tired of an 
undertaking which had involved them in so many 
losses and disappointments. The ships which 
arrived in the summer of 1727 brought word that 
the company had disengaged themselves from the 



62 



HANS EGEDE. 



Greenland trade ; but they also brought the en- 
couraging assurance that the king was resolved to 
support the mission notwithstanding the present 
unpromising aspect of affairs. He had therefore 
sent out a commissary, charged to confer with the 
factor upon the best methods of promoting the 
mercantile progress of the colony. By this arrange- 
ment, Mr. Egede gladly found himself relieved from 
the harassing secular business which had demanded 
so large a portion of his time ; but he was deprived 
at this period, of the assistance of his colleague, 
Mr. Top, who had laboured with exemplary dili- 
gence during his four years' residence in the coun- 
try. His health had now become so enfeebled that 
he was forced to seek a less rigorous climate. 

Deprived of other help, Egede availed himself 
more largely of the services of his son Paul, who 
was now about eighteen years of age, and was 
looking forward to be himself a missionary at 
some future day. His father saw with pleasure 
that he had entirely won the goodwill of the natives, 
and from his early familiarity with their language, 
was able to render his conversation and instruc- 
tions acceptable to them. But the missionary had 
still the grief to see, that although a certain 
knowledge of Scripture truth had been imparted 
more or less to many persons, and by their con- 
stant journeyings and migrations had become 
pretty widely diffused along the coast, it was a 
merely historical knowledge, which did not affect 
the conduct or the feelings. Of all the adults to 



KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT FAITH. 



63 



whom he had declared the Gospel during the 
space of seven years, but one man had appeared 
really to believe it ; this was Poek, whose visit to 
Copenhagen has been mentioned on a former page. 
In 1728, Egede baptized him and his wife. He 
had observed more hopeful results among the 
young, many of whom had been attracted by his 
kindness to listen regularly to his teaching ; and 
some he thought had received the truth into their 
hearts. At present it was still but the seed-time ; 
hardly could he perceive, here and there, one 
tender blade beginning to sprout upwards ; but he 
remembered that it had been often thus : for " one 
man soweth, and another reapeth." 

King Frederic had embraced the cause of Green- 
land with remarkable zeal. He was making dis- 
positions not only to uphold the mission as at pre- 
sent, but to plant missionaries at various points 
of the coast, and colonies for the cultivation of 
the land. Four vessels were despatched from Co- 
penhagen in the year 1728. They brought two 
missionaries and a large party of colonists, con- 
sisting of masons, carpenters, and mechanics of all 
descriptions ; herdsmen also, wdth flocks of sheep 
and cattle to be pastured in the sheltered valleys 
during the brief summer, and housed and tended 
within doors through all the nine months' winter. 
There were also building materials for erecting a 
settlement and a port ; with cannon and am- 
munition, and a sufficient garrison under the 
charge of two superior officers, one of whom was 



64 



HANS EGEDE. 



to be governor, and the other commandant. It 
appeared, however, that the nature of the country 
was still very imperfectly understood at Copen- 
hagen, for the officers were provided with horses, 
with which to travel over the mountains, recon- 
noitre the inland country, and if possible discover 
the principal settlements of the ancient colonists, 
which then, and for one hundred years afterwards, 
were confidently believed to have been on the coast 
facing Iceland. 

The first care of the governor was to remove the 
settlement of Godhaab to the mainland, about ten 
miles farther to the east, and to enlarge it with the 
necessary buildings. But the ill success which 
had hitherto attended the efforts made for the 
advancement of the colony, followed the well- 
conceived plan of the king, and defeated his 
benevolent ^intentions. The authorities at Copen- 
hagen had made an unwise selection of emigrants. 
Some, indeed (and the most useful), were artisans 
and labourers who had volunteered for the enter- 
prise ; but others were convicts, who had been 
taken out of the house of correction, provided 
with wives, and sent over to cultivate the country. 
To both classes of emigrants the confinement and 
inaction of their life on ship-board had been 
sufficiently trying ; and the wet, unwholesome 
weather which they encountered on landing served 
still farther to nourish a spirit of depression and 
discontent. The season was unusually cold 
and rainy ; its evil effect upon their health was 



NEW COLONISTS. 



65 



aggravated by the irregular living in which they 
found opportunity to indulge, while the arrange- 
ments of the intended colony were still unsettled 
and the regulations for its government not put into 
force. The consequence was a contagious disorder, 
which quickly extended itself, and carried off, not 
only the unruly and intemperate members of the 
community, but the most useful mechanics and 
workmen. In the general sickness and mortality 
which prevailed, the cattle failed to receive the 
care which was indispensable for their preservation 
in such a climate, and they also perished. These 
troubles were greatly enhanced by a mutiny among 
the soldiers. Disgusted with a country which 
afforded them so much less scope for indulgence 
than they had been used to at home, they broke into 
a rebellion which threatened not only the lives of 
their officers, but those of the missionaries, for they 
regarded them as the authors of their banishment. 
The malady which was raging ended the mutiny 
by cutting off the ringleaders ; but it was not until 
the spring of 1729 that the health and peace of the 
settlement were restored ; and by that time, the 
greater number of the emigrants had found a grave- 
beneath the snow. The death of many useful and 
well-disposed labourers was a heavy blow : with 
respect to the mutinous and disorderly characters 
who had perished, it was felt that their prolonged 
life would probably have been a greater evil to the 
colony than the contagious sickness which had 
carried them off. Certain of the women, especially, 

F 



66 



BASS EGEDE. 



who had accepted the offer of emigration to escape 
from prison, had misconducted themselves so 
grossly as to call forth the contemptuous scoffs 
of the natives, who, whatever their real character 
might be. were seldom guilty of unbecoming con- 
duct in public. 

As soon as the sickness was at an end. and order 
had been restored, the governor, Major Paars, 
with a few of the men who remained to him. made 
an attempt to cross the mountains, and penetrate 
to the east side, as the king had enjoined him. 
The horses were all dead, but that was of the less 
consequence, since the explorers quickly disco- 
vered that it would have been impossible to travel 
over such ground on horseback. The whole country 
was overspread with ice so slippery and uneven 
that they could not even stand upon it, and rifted 
in clefts of various width, out of which the water 
gushed in torrents with a loud roar. A recent 
English navigator, Sir Leopold M'Clintock, has 
found reason to believe that by observing the 
variations in the surface of the glacier, avoiding 
the clefts, and following the windings between 
them, the interior of Greenland might be reached. 
But at the point where Major Paars and his com- 
pany attempted to cross, this seems to have been 
impracticable ; and after an absence of nearly a 
fortnight, they returned, hopeless of success, to 
Godhaab. Foiled in the endeavour to discover 
a suitable spot on the east side of the country, the 
governor and commandant now took measures for 



FRESH ENCOURAGEMENT. 



87 




KAPPAROKTOLIK GLACIER. 



re-erecting the abandoned settlement on the island 
of Nepisene, and strengthening it with a fort. 
And they were gratified by an encouraging mes- 
sage from the king, who sent them also ships laden 
with timber, and other necessaries. 

Missionary operations had been greatly impeded 
during the last year. The Greenlanders had been 
alarmed by the influx of Europeans ; and the 
arrival of the soldiers in particular had aroused 
their fears and suspicions. It was a great relief 
to them when they saw so many of the newly- 
arrived emigrants carried off by the sickness ; and 



68 



HANS EGEDE. 



they attributed this happy result to the incan- 
tations of a famous Angekok who had persuaded 
them that he could destroy the Kablunaet. But 
seeing that some of the fighting-men whom they 
so much dreaded remained alive, the greater 
number of them migrated to Disko Bay, far to 
the north of Godhaab ; and thus, to the great grief 
of Egede, placed themselves for the present quite 
beyond the reach of Christian instruction. There 
were, however, many natives living on the islands 
in Baal's Eiver, and not a few of these professed 
their belief in the word which the missionary 
preached to them, though he could see no evidence 
that it was a belief unto righteousness. He thought 
that if these people would suffer him to baptize 
their young children, on the understanding that 
they would not remove them afterwards from the 
neighbourhood of the mission, he, and the col- 
leagues who had lately joined him, might be able 
to train up these little ones in the knowledge and 
fear of God, and perhaps the children in their 
turn might help to bring their parents within the 
fold of Christ's Church. He submitted this plan 
to the College of Missions at Copenhagen. They 
agreed to it, on condition that the parents should 
distinctly understand that Baptism was offered to 
their children as a means of blessing to the soul, 
not as a means of health or strength to the body ; 
and that they should freely consent to their 
Baptism and instruction in the Christian religion, 
without being in any way allured by presents or 



LITTLE CATECHUMENS. 



69 



prospects of temporal advantage. In the year 
1729, Mr. Egede began to put this design into 
execution by baptizing sixteen little children 
belonging to families who dwelt in the isles of 
Kookornen ; the parents being not only ready to 
offer them, but even requesting to be baptized 
themselves — a request which the missionary would 
have been but too happy to grant, had he seen 
any reason to believe that it proceeded from an 
enlightened heart. From these islands he pro- 
ceeded to others, and had soon a little flock in 
several places, whom he visited and taught. The 
native children were by no means deficient in 
quickness. They were very volatile, but if their 
attention could be secured they made rapid 
progress ; and Egede was rejoiced to find that 
some of his young disciples readily retained the 
lessons he taught them, and appeared to com- 
prehend them quite as well as could be expected 
at their tender age. Mr. Egede's beloved pupil, 
Frederic Christian, was of great use to him 
now. Often when he would have visited his 
little scholars he was detained from them by 
other calls of duty. At such times he deputed 
Frederic to give them a lesson, and sometimes also 
sent him to read the portions of Scripture which 
he had translated to their parents. 

The second summer after the arrival of the 
governor was distinguished by a scarcity similar 
to that which had occurred in 1726, and owing to 
a similar cause — the detention of the store-ship by 



70 



HANS EGEDE. 



ice and storms. When it at length arrived, it 
was found to be laden not only with the necessary 
provisions, but with all kinds of building materials, 
for the erection of houses in the valleys formerly 
peopled by the Norwegians ; and it was the 
design of the king to transplant families from 
Iceland to inhabit them. Hardly, however, had 
the vessel unloaded her cargo, and the governor 
been made aware of the king's intention, when the 
spring which set in motion all these plans for 
the benefit of Greenland was suddenly stopped 
by the death of Frederic IV. His successor, 
Christian VI., seeing that all the schemes of 
colonization and commerce which had been at- 
tempted had disappointed the hopes of their 
projectors, and that little success had attended 
the efforts made for the conversion of the natives, 
issued a mandate that the settlements of Godhaab 
and Nepisene should be abandoned, and all the 
colonists should return to their own country. It 
was left to Mr. Egede's own choice to return with 
them or to remain in Greenland. In case he re- 
mained, he might keep as many of the people as 
chose to stay with him, and provisions to last for 
one year ; but he was warned to expect no farther 
assistance from Denmark. This was indeed a 
grievous discouragement to the long-cherished 
hopes of the missionary. None of the colonists 
were willing to remain ; and of the sailors who 
would have been of real use to him, the captains 
of the ships declared they could not spare one. 



ABANDONMENT OF THE COLONY. 



71 



He would thus have been left alone to provide 
for the sustenance of his family, without other 
assistance than that of his second son, Niels, a 
youth of eighteen or nineteen. Paul had gone to 
Copenhagen in 1728, and was still there, pursuing 
his studies for the ministry. Under these cir- 
cumstances there seemed little hope that Egede 
could continue his labours for the good of the 
natives. Yet he could not bear to relinquish 
them, and least of all could he make up his mind 
to desert the little flock of children whom he had 
baptized and taught. Happily there was not 
room in the ships to carry away all the goods be- 
longing to the inhabitants of the two settlements, 
and as it was apparent that everything which 
was left behind, not excepting the buildings them- 
selves, would become a prey to the Greenlanders 
or to foreign traders as soon as the ships had 
departed, Mr. Egede prevailed on the captains to 
leave ten seamen for their protection. He under- 
took, with the assistance of his son Niels, to carry 
on the trade with the natives, that the govern- 
ment might receive some compensation for the 
expense of sending a ship to Greenland in the 
following year. His two colleagues and the rest 
of the people now took their departure, and six 
Greenlanders accompanied them to Copenhagen. 

Soon after they had sailed, and before Egede 
could provide for the removal or safe custody of 
the buildings and stores left at Nepisene, a party 
of Dutch or other foreign traders, finding the 



72 



HANS EGEDE. 



place unpeopled, and prompted as before by 
mercantile jealousy, set fire to it, and consumed 
the whole. This was bad ; but a more serious 
cause of sorrow and vexation was the conduct of 
the parents whose children had been baptized. 
Unmindful of their promise to remain near God- 
haab, they yielded this year to the love of 
wandering, which was a marked feature of the 
native character, and migrated to distant parts of 
the coast. For some time before this migration 
took place, Egede had found unusual difficulty in 
collecting the children for instruction ; the parents 
frequently hiding them, and refusing to let them 
go to the missionary, on the pretext that they 
were afraid he meant to carry them away. They 
were perhaps afraid lest their children should 
become too well affected to European notions, and 
refuse to conform to Greenland habits when they 
grew older. 

The series of toils, vexations, and anxieties 
through which Egede had passed since his 
arrival in Greenland had greatly impaired his 
bodily strength. His mental vigour might well 
have failed also ; but he possessed an unfailing 
source of refreshment in the loving sympathy of 
his family, and above all in the Christian hope 
which animated the spirit of his wife. This 
truly excellent woman had endured much in the 
course of her Greenland life ; had been subjected 
to many privations, and at times to much actual 
suffering; but she had never repined, never 



HOME SUNSHINE. 



73 



uttered a word which savoured of discouragement, 
or breathed regret for the loss of former enjoy- 
ments. However oppressed her husband might 
be by the multiplied obstacles which beset his 
path and defeated his efforts for the spiritual 
welfare of the natives, his burdens were lightened 
and rendered tolerable by her lively sympathy 
and enduring fortitude. " Our God called us 
away from our country and our father's house to 
come hither ; and He will never fail us," was the 
thought which soothed all her fears and sorrows. 
By her tender ingenuity and watchful care her 
children found their ice-surrounded Greenland 
home full of happiness ; and all who came within 
her reach, whether Europeans or natives, had a 
part in her benevolent deeds. 

Niels Egede was an invaluable helper to his 
father at this time ; both in conducting the neces- 
sary traffic with the Greenlanders, and in taking 
pains to instruct the natives whom he met with on 
his trading excursions. And by his exertions, and 
those of the sailors who had been left in the 
country, and who were content to act under his 
command, a larger cargo of oil and blubber was 
procured this year than in any of the former ones, 
in which so many more persons had been engaged 
and so much expense incurred. Niels and his 
crew would have been more successful still, had 
they not lost two of their largest boats in a storm, 
just at the season when the trade was in its fullest 
activity. 



7± 



HAXS EGEDE. 



Meanwhile, the new king, Christian VI., though 
he had not promised any farther aid to the mis- 
sion, had come to the conclusion that Mr. Egede's 
persevering and strenuous exertions deserved some 
support. He sent him, in 1732, the necessary 
supplies for one more year, and when that was 
expired, and he was in much suspense as to the 
future, his heart was rejoiced /by the arrival of 
a ship "bringing the welcome intelligence that the 
king meant to recommence and uphold the Green- 
land mission. In this ship arrived two young 
Moravian missionaries from Germany, accompa- 
nied by an older brother, who came to assist them 
in preparing a dwelling, and otherwise providing 
for themselves. They had obtained the king's 
permission to labour in Greenland, and brought 
with them a letter written by his own hand, in 
which he recommended them to the friendly offices 
of Mr. Egede. Even without this token of the 
royal favour, their desire to promote the best in- 
terests of the natives would have insured them 
the regard of the veteran missionary. He received 
them with cordial goodwill, and gave them all the 
assistance in his power towards the acquisition of 
the language, as well as all the little additions to 
their necessary comforts which he and his wife 
had it in their power to bestow. These missiona- 
ries (Frederick Bcehnioch and Matthew Stach) 
were destined to take an important part in the 
evangelizing of Greenland (and an account of 
their labours, and of the success with which they 



THE SMALL-POX IN GEEENLAND. 



75 



were rewarded, will be found in another memoir, 
that of Matthew Stach) ; but the first year of their 
residence in the country was marked by a darker 
and deeper cloud than any which had yet rested 
upon Greenland. Of the six natives who had 
been carried to Denmark in 1731, two only sur- 
vived ; an d to these, also, the change of climate, or 
of living, seemed to be so injurious, that they were 
sent back to their own country by one of the 
ships despatched from Copenhagen in the summer 
of 1733. One died on the voyage ; the other re- 
covered health and strength, and landed at God- 
haab to all appearance perfectly well. He set 
off almost immediately to visit his friends and 
kindred, who were scattered in various islands 
and along the coast ; and nothing more was heard 
of him until two or three weeks afterwards, when 
he was brought back to Godhaab, dying. Mr. 
Egede saw at once that he had the small-pox, and 
sent messengers instantly to all the places round 
Godhaab to warn the inhabitants not to come 
within reach of infection, or if they had unhap- 
pily already caught it, not to leave their own 
homes. But no warnings proved of any avail. 
The poor boy had already unconsciously commu- 
nicated the disease to several persons ; but the 
natives had never seen the small-pox before, and 
could not at first believe that they must take any 
particular precaution against the spread of the 
disorder. The disease, however, quickly assumed 
its most virulent form. Scarcely one of the 



76 



HANS EGEDE. 



natives in that part of the country escaped the 
infection, and very few of those who were attacked 
recovered. The first who died was Frederic 
Christian, to the great sorrow of Mr. Egede, who 
had instructed him and watched over him with 
fatherly kindness for the last nine years. But of 
this, his son in the Gospel, he could hope that he 
had but fallen asleep in Christ. Xo such hope 
cheered the sad scenes of which he was now the 
daily witness. It was in vain that he, his son 
Xiels, and the German missionaries continually 
went about, carrying with them such means of 
relief as they possessed, and imploring the people 
to abstain from things which they knew must be 
hurtful to them, The unhappy creatures would 
listen to no persuasion. Impatient of the excru- 
ciating pain, heat, and thirst which they were en- 
during, they could not be restrained from con- 
tinually drinking iced water ; and owing, Egede 
thought, to this, they seldom outlived the third 
day. Several stabbed themselves, or plunged into 
the sea, to put a speedier end to their sufferings. 
^Yhile her husband and his companions were 
visiting the people at their houses. Mrs. Egede 
turned her house into an hospital, and received all 
who fled to her, till every room was filled with 
the sick and dying, whom, with the help of her 
family, she nursed night and day. Between the 
months of September and January five hundred 
persons died in the neighbourhood of Baal's Eiver, 
and but eight recovered. Wherever the mission- 



RAVAGES BY SMALL-POX. 77 




MRS. EGEDE NURSING STCK AT HER HOUSE. 



aries went, they were shocked by the sight of 
houses tenanted only by the corpses of their 
former occupants, and of dead bodies lying un- 
buried on the snow. To these they rendered the 
last charity of a grave, by covering them with 
stones. The Greenlanders were in general par- 
ticularly solicitous about the burial of their dead, 
but in the present distress these cares were for- 
gotten. One remarkabl instance of calm fore- 



78 



HA2s _ S EGEDE. 



thought on the part of a dying man came to the 
notice of Egede. The only living creatures found 
on one island were a little girl, covered with 
small-pox, and three younger brothers. The 
father had buried all the rest of his family and 
neighbours ; and feeling that he had not long to 
live, had prepared a grave of stones, in which he 
laid himself down, and bade his little daughter 
cover him over with skins, first telling her that he 
had provided a supply of food for her and her 
brothers, consisting of two dead seals and some 
dried herrings, upon which they were to live till 
they could get to the place where the Europeans 
were. The sickness lasted till the summer of 
1734, extending over a considerable portion of the 
country. More than two thousand persons died, 
and for many leagues north and south of Godhaab 
the land was depopulated. The pity and care 
which the sufferers experienced at the hands of 
Egede and his family touched the hearts of some 
amongst them. One who had been bitterly 
opposed to the missionary and his teaching, said 
to him in his dying moments, c< You have been 
kinder to us than we have been to one another. 
You have tended us in our sickness, fed us when we 
were famishing, buried our dead, who would else 
have been a prey to dogs and ravens. And you 
have told us of God, and of a better life to come." 
In some of the children whom he had baptized 
and taught, Egede was much comforted to perceive 
a spirit of patient resignation, and a happy hope 



DEATH OF MRS. EGEDE. 



79 



of the resurrection to life. But amongst the older 
natives, too many refused all exhortation and com- 
fort. " We have called on God to help," said some 
of these, " and no help came ;" and they vented 
their despair in wild cries and revilings. 

The pestilence was hardly over, when a ship 
arrived from Denmark, having on board three 
missionaries, one of whom was Paul Egede. He 
was to be stationed at a new settlement about to 
be founded at Disko Bay. For the present, how- 
ever, he remained at Godhaab, to comfort and 
assist his parents, who were almost worn out with 
the distressing scenes of the last nine months. It 
appeared very improbable that Mr. Egede would 
ever recover sufficient strength to resume the 
laborious duties of his mission ; but it was thought 
that a change of climate might in part at least 
restore his health and that of his wife. Both of 
them desired to take their young daughters to 
Europe, that they might enjoy some advantages 
of education which could not be afforded them in 
Greenland. But before any arrangements could 
be made for their departure, Mrs. Egede was at- 
tacked by a painful and lingering disease. After 
several months of suffering, borne in the same 
spirit of faith and patience which had governed 
her life, she entered into rest, December 21st, 
1736. This last and heaviest sorrow almost over- 
whelmed the spirit of her husband. Utterly 
broken down in health, he fell into such a state of 
depression as greatly alarmed his children. He 



80 



HANS EGEI)E. 



says of himself that a great darkness fell upon 
hirn. He felt as if he were so far from God that 
he could not even bear to hear the Scriptures 
read, or to be present at Divine worship. But he 
suffered in silence, and none knew how deep his 
distress was, until one night when his children 
overheard him lamenting in tones of anguish 
that his God had forsaken him. They came about 
him with anxious affection, and brought his fellow- 
labourers to comfort him wdth prayers and good 
words ; but his soul refused comfort. After a time 
these seasons of mental agony became less frequent 
and acute. He exerted himself as well as he was 
able for the benefit of the people ; and before 
leaving the colony, recovered sufficient strength 
to preach to them for the last time, taking for his 
text these words : " I said, I have laboured in 
vain ; I have spent my strength for nought, and in 
vain ; yet surely my judgment is with the Lord, 
and my work with my God." (Isaiah xlix. 4.) 

He yet had hope that God would make His ways 
known to this people ; and there were some indi- 
cations, scarcely perceived as yet, that the Word 
of Truth, which had so long been preached to 
them, was beginning to excite serious thoughts in 
a few at least. Not many weeks before, a stranger, 
coming from a distant spot on the south coast, 
had visited Mr. Egede, who received him with his 
usual kindness, and strove to lead him into some 
understanding of the things belonging to his peace. 
The man's attention had been awakened. After 



VISIT FROM A STRANGER. 



81 



leaving Godhaab he pondered over what he had 
heard, and could not rest satisfied without knowing 
more. His business carried him to a spot where 
the Moravian missionaries had pitched their tent 




NATIVE INQUIRING OF MORAVIANS. 



for the purpose of fishing ; and he sought them 
out, as they supposed, for the sake of exchanging 
a portion of his provisions for some of their iron 
ware. But after remaining silent and thoughtful 
for some time, he told them that he had been with 
the Pellesse (the Greenland mode of pronouncing 
the Danish word Praetz — priest or minister}, who 

G 



82 



HA2s T S EGEDE. 



had told hhn wonderful things concerning One 
who had created Heaven and earth, and whom he 
called God. Did they know anything about it? 
If they did, would they tell him ; for he could not 
remember all that the Pellesse had said, and he 
wanted to know more. They repeated to him the 
wonderful story of man's first creation in spotless 
purity and perfection, the happy ruler of a world 
where all things were " very good ;" of his fall 
into a state of sin and condemnation ; of his re- 
covery through the atonement made by a Divine 
Redeemer. The stranger listened with fixed at- 
tention, remained with them the rest of the day, 
was a quiet, respectful spectator of their evening 
worship, and slept all night in their tent. The 
thoughtful, reverent demeanour of this man, so 
different from that of his countrymen generally, 
made the missionaries hope that he was not far 
from the kingdom of God. 

In the beginning of August, 1736, just fifteen 
years from the time when he had entered his 
first Greenland dwelling, Mr. Egede quitted the 
country which had been the scene of so many 
toils and sorrows, accompanied by bis daughters 
and his son Xiels. The storms which had assailed 
them on the outward voyage were exceeded in 
violence by those which they encountered on 
their return, and the ship narrowly escaped the 
fate of thirty others which, in one short hour, 
were dashed to pieces on the coast of Norway. 
Delivered from these dangers, the missionary and 



EGEDE RETURNS TO DENMARK. 



83 



his companions arrived safely at Copenhagen on 
the 24th September. He was received with much 
respect and sympathy by the pious members of 
the Church, and by the king himself, who con- 
ferred with him about the best means of promoting 
the spiritual good of the Greenlanders ; and soon 
afterwards placed him in a position to carry out 
his views. He was appointed superintendent of 
the mission in Greenland, and empowered to 
found a seminary for the education of students 
and orphan youths, from amongst whom future 
missionaries and catechists were to be chosen. 
They were to be instructed in the Greenland]* c 
tongue, and in other branches of knowledge 
requisite to fit them for service in that country. 
In the climate of Denmark, Egede recovered in a 
considerable degree his former health, and was 
spared through many years of useful labour. Long 
before his death the fields which he beheld so 
barren were whitening to the harvest, and his 
own beloved sons were not the least active and 
useful among the labourers. Shortly before his 
father's departure from Greenland, Paul Egede 
had gone to the newly-formed station at Disko 
Bay. He continued for some years in this mission, 
and was greatly esteemed by the natives. He 
afterwards succeeded his father in the charge of 
the seminary at Copenhagen ; and employed him- 
self in preparing various works for the assistance 
of the students and missionaries, and in trans- 
lating a portion of the Scriptures. Before leaving 



84 



HANS EGEDE. 



Greenland he had translated some of the Books of 
Moses, but was induced to suspend the work by 
the representations of some Christian natives who 
assisted him, and who imagined that their country- 
men would make a bad use of some of the facts 
recorded in the sacred narrative ; instancing, 
particularly, the murder of Abel by his brother 
Cain, the deceit of which Jacob was guilty 
towards his father, and various other instances of 
human frailty and crime which stained the lives 
of the patriarchs. That these worthy men, newly 
converted from heathen darkness, should entertain 
such fears, might be very natural ; but it seems 
strange that Paul Egede should have been so 
much influenced by them as to withhold from the 
native converts the translation which he had 
made. We might have supposed that he who 
from a child had known the Scriptures would 
have had no fear that the study of any book in the 
Bible would make sin appear excusable or desir- 
able. He however laid aside his translation of 
the Old Testament, and began to translate the 
New, which was finished and published after his 
return to Denmark. 

Niels Egede continued to an advanced age in 
the seafaring and mercantile occupations upon 
which he had entered in his youth ; but blended 
with them so diligent a care for the religious 
instruction of the natives, that they and his own 
countrymen also looked upon him as being quite 
as much a teacher and catechist as he was a 



DRACHART. 



85 




PAUL EGEDE. 



mercliant and sailor. One of the first missionaries 
whom Mr. Egede had the happiness of sending 
out, was a man of remarkably devout and affec- 
tionate spirit, named Drachart. He was appointed 
to Godhaab, and arrived there in 1739, about* a 
year after the beginning of that work of God 
which, gradually extending its gracious influence, 
brought a multitude of Greenlanders out of dark- 
ness into light. Drachart (whom the natives 
called Pelissingoak — the little minister, to distinguish 
him from one who was taller) was much beloved 
both by the Greenlanders and Europeans ; and 



86 



HANS EGEDE. 



his preaching had a most salutary effect upon the 
traders and seamen employed in the service of the 
colony. Many who at their first coming to 
Greenland knew little more of the Eedeemer 
whose name they bore than the heathen them- 
selves, were converted to earnest Christian men 
by the blessing of God on his instructions ; and 
the marked change in their conduct produced a 
very happy effect upon the natives who were as 
yet unenlightened. They perceived now that 
there was something in the religion preached to 
them which went far deeper than that outward 
hearing and assent, which was all they had 
hitherto given to it. One little incident in 
Drachart's missionary labours, which occurred in 
the third year after his coming to Greenland, may 
be added here. Amongst the catechumens whom 
he was preparing for Baptism, were two young 
women, whose father, when he heard that they 
were to be baptized, went to the missionary, and 
asked if he might not be baptized too? "It is 
true," said he, " I can say but little, and very 
probably I shall never learn so much as my 
children, for thou canst see that my hair is quite 
grey, and that I am a very old man ; but I believe 
with all my heart in Jesus Christ, and that all 
thou say est of Him is true." So moving a 
petition could not be refused, though the old man 
could no longer retain in his memory the cate- 
chetical instruction given to younger candidates. 
He was deeply affected, and the tears ran down 



NATIVE DISCIPLES. 



87 



his cheeks like rain while Baptism was adminis- 
tered to himself and his children. 

Sometimes the natives, coming in their accus- 
tomed wandering way of life to the Godhaab 
district, and soon leaving it again, were not seen 
for many years ; yet it was found that some had 
carried away with them a portion at least of that 
which had been taught them, and notwithstanding 
the evil communications of surrounding kindred 
and neighbours, they led a different life from the 
heathen, and entered eternity after a different 
manner. Several years after Mr. Drachart had 
quitted Greenland for another field of labour, a 
missionary, journeying in a distant part of the 
country, came to a hut in which he found only a 
sick man with his wife and two children. Making 
some friendly inquiries of the poor woman about 
her husband's illness, she replied, " My husband 
used to put confidence in the Angekoks, but now 
he minds them no more. When he is in great pain, 
he says, Ah ! pray to our Saviour for me. But I, 
alas ! can hardly pray ; I am very ignorant. Once, 
indeed, I heard something from Pelissingoak, at 
Godhaab, but whither is it fled !" And as she said 
this she wept much. Very gladly the missionary 
encouraged and comforted these poor people, 
praying with them, and recalling to their memories 
the instruction they had formerly received. 

In 1756, King Christian YI. died, and was 
succeeded by Frederic V., who continued the 
favour and protection which his predecessors had 



88 



HANS EGEDE. 



bestowed on the Greenland mission. The vene- 
rable Mr. Egede had retired from his post of 
superintendent some years before the death of 
Christian. His old age was full of peace and 
honour. He had taken up his abode with one of his 
daughters who lived in the Island of Falster ; and 
there, on the 5th November, 1758, and in the 73rd 
year of his age, he departed to be with his Lord, 

From the time that Egede procured the esta- 
blishment of a mission in Greenland, the Danes 
never wholly lost sight of the country ; though, as 
the preceding narrative has shown, the failure of 
their first attempts at colonization led them for a 
few years to abandon the settlements they had 
formed. Greenland has now long been wholly a 
Danish colony ; about a thousand Danes residing 
at various points of the coast, to manage the trade 
with the mother-country, which consists chiefly 
in the exchange of European articles for oil, and 
skins of seals, reindeer, &c. The Greenlanders, 
or Esquimaux (as they are now generally called), 
are not subject to the Danish laws, but they are 
much attached to the Danes, and wholly under 
their influence. A clergyman, a doctor, and a 
schoolmaster^, whose duty it is to give gratuitous 
instruction and relief to the natives, are stationed 
in each district, and paid by the government. All 
the people of West Greenland have become 
Christians, and many are able to read and write. 



89 



MATTHEW STACH AND HIS ASSOCIATES ; 

THE FOUNDERS OF THE MORAVIAN MISSIONS IN 
GREENLAND AND LABRADOR. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century, a few 
descendants from the ancient Unitas Fratrum still 
lingered in Moravia, amongst whom were the 
parents of the missionary brethren whose labours 
form the chief subjects of the following pages. 
Sheltered in some degree from persecution by 
their poverty and obscure condition, they were 
nevertheless exposed from time to time to the 
operation of penal statutes, which were made to 
bear more or less hardly upon them, according to 
the inclination of the reigning emperor, or the 
political circumstances of the times. The public 
exercise of their worship had long been pro- 
hibited ; neither might they safely allow it to be 
known that they possessed any other than the 
Eoman Catholic version of the Scriptures, or any 
copies of their liturgy, or other religious works. 
The forefathers of Matthew Stach and his brethren 
had been all subjected to exile, imprisonment, 
torture, and death itself, for their profession of the 



90 



MATTHEW STACH. 



faith; which they claimed to have preserved 
(though not always in equal purity), ever since 
the Gospel had been introduced into their country, 
by missionaries of the Greek church, in the course 
of the ninth century. But under the silence and 
concealment which persecution had compelled 
their descendants to observe, with regard to their 
religious doctrines, many, especially of the 
younger people, were in danger of losing their 
faith altogether. To obviate this evil, a few 
zealous men began to act as missionaries to their 
brethren, travelling up and down in the districts 
where they chiefly resided, to exhort them not to 
swerve from the faith for which their predecessors 
had suffered so severely, and endeavouring, above 
all, to awaken in them a spirit of greater earnest- 
ness and devotion. Nor were their labours un- 
fruitful. At the end of a few years, a powerful 
religious movement began to make itself felt among 
the brethren in Moravia. But the harsh treat- 
ment to which they were always liable, and 
which at this time was inflicted upon some of 
their number, caused many to long for a retreat 
where they might serve God in peace, and revive 
the religious discipline and ritual of their ances- 
tors. 

Having heard that there was greater liberty of 
conscience in Saxony and Silesia, many sought an 
asylum in those countries. A small body, w r ho 
emigrated in 1722, were kindly received in 
Lusatia (a territory lying between the two above- 



EARLY HISTORY OF THE MISSIONARIES. 91 

named countries), where Count Zinzendorf, the 
owner of the estate of Bertholsdorf, encouraged 
them to settle on his land. Accordingly, on a 
hill called Hutberg, they erected a small village, 




HEBRNHUT IN MORAVIA. 



which they named Herrnhut (the Lord's Watch.) 
The leader of this little band was a man of much 
energy and piety, named Christian David. Hav- 
ing found so secure an asylum for his people, he 
ventured repeatedly to return to Moravia, for the 
purpose of guiding and encouraging other emi- 
grants to escape thither ; since the severity with 
which their rulers prohibited emigration, rendered 
the enterprise difficult and hazardous. Many 



y2 



MATTHEW STACK. 



were arrested ere they had crossed the frontier, 
and punished by scourging and imprisonment: 
but at the end of ten years, the population of the 
colony at Herrnhut amounted to six hundred per- 
sons, and it was at this time that the brethren 
entered upon their first missionary undertakings. 
A few words concerning the early life of the chief 
Greenland missionaries, Matthew Stach, Frederic 
Boehnisch, and John Beck, may fitly precede the 
history of their mission. 

In the great persecution of 1 620, the ancestors 
of Matthew Stach were compelled to quit their 
native land, and flee into Saxony. Many years 
afterwards, some of their descendants ventured 
back to Moravia, amongst whom was Christian 
Stach, the father of Matthew. He was a man of 
exemplary life, so much esteemed by his neigh- 
bours for his meek and benevolent disposition, 
that, although stigmatized as a heretic, and known 
to be warmly attached to his religion, he remained 
during several years almost unmolested. Chris- 
tian Stach bent all his efforts to train up his child- 
ren in the fear of God. " The first time," said 
Matthew, " that I ever had any serious thoughts, 
they arose in this way. When I was about four 
or five years old, my father one day found me cry- 
ing bitterly because, in the general distribution of 
the cake, a very small slice had fallen to my share. 
He gave me a larger piece, saying, at the same 
time, ' My child, if thou wouldst thus weep over 
thy sins, it were better.' These words sank into 



CHRISTIAN STACH. 



93 



my heart." In his sixth year the little boy began 
to herd the cattle in summer time, but in the 
winter was carefully instructed by his father; 
who was well read in the Scriptures and in the 
writings of the Eeformers, though he had had 
little opportunity of acquiring secular learning. 
" My father," writes Matthew, " took particular 
pains to teach me to pray, often telling me what 
I should ask of my Father in Heaven. In my 
childish days, I was much concerned about the 
salvation of my soul, and often very unhappy 
because I could not feel that God was well-pleased 
with me. But going from home at twelve years 
of age, to enter into service, these serious thoughts 
were almost banished by new scenes and occupa- 
tions. I now made many acquaintances of my 
own age, and would gladly have shared in their 
pastimes ; but for the most part they rejected my 
company, and treated me with contumely, because 
I was, said they, ' a heretic,'' In my next situa- 
tion, I met with more friendly comrades, and 
enjoyed much more liberty. My master was, 
however, a pious man, who failed not to admonish 
me when he saw that I was turning aside to evil ; 
but I had become too fond of company, and eager 
for amusement ; and though conscience reproached 
me for running into temptation, I often joined the 
band of men and boys who frequented the village 
tavern to drink, dance, and divert themselves/' 

In the course of a year or two, however, all his 
early religious impressions were revived in full 



94 



MATTHEW STACH. 



force. " My master," he says, tc had been speak- 
ing to me very seriously on the course of life I 
was leading. His words went to my heart, as 
those of my father had done, twelve years before ; 
and a voice in my inmost soul said, Thou must pray. 
I did so, and from that time never again suffered 
the day to pass by without prayer." Even in his 
most careless days, Matthew Stach had sometimes 
longed that he and his kindred could escape from 
the severe restraint in which they were held by 
their popish rulers, to some spot where they might 
worship God after the manner of their forefathers. 
The wish now acquired fresh force, and, hearing 
the settlement at Hermhut spoken of, he resolved 
to go. thither whatever difficulties might beset his 
way, But his father did not at first approve of 
this scheme. " I have long toiled for your benefit, 
my son," said he, " and I hoped that now you 
would soon be able to take my place, and become 
the stay and comfort of your mother and sisters." 
Matthew loved his parents too sincerely to oppose 
his own wishes to theirs. The father, however, 
perceiving that his son continued somewhat sad 
and anxious, said to him, " My dear son, if you 
think that you cannot serve God faithfully in this 
land, and are really animated by the desire to dc» 
His will and save your soul, go to Hermhut. I 
would not for the whole world keep you back." 
Upon this Matthew set out with a glad heart, but 
secretly, and by night. He gained the frontier 
without accident, and in due time arrived safely 



SOUGHT AND FOUND. 



95 



at Herrnhut, but with only a few pence in his 
pocket. At first, he could hardly, by the most 
diligent labour, gain a sufficient quantity of the 
necessaries of life. This, however, was a small 
trouble, compared with the sorrow occasioned by 
sad tidings from home. A cousin of Matthew's 
had joined him at Herrnhut, and the fathers of 
both the young men had been severely punished 
for the flight of their sons ; laid in irons, and 
sentenced to hard labour. The father of Matthew 
was released after a short captivity, but his uncle 
remained a prisoner almost to the day of his death. 
The two youths set out again for Moravia, deter- 
mined to effect the escape of their relatives, if 
possible ; and although they could not at that time 
accomplish their purpose, all the surviving mem- 
bers of the family were eventually reunited at 
Herrnhut; but in deep poverty, for they had 
been obliged to leave all their goods behind 
them. 

His chief earthly wish was thus fulfilled, yet 
Matthew Stach was still far from peace. Not- 
withstanding his religious education, his eyes 
were not yet opened to see clearly the true mean- 
ing of the Gospel, and he was labouring to obtain 
repose of mind by his own righteousness. His 
anxiety was aggravated by a mistaken notion 
which prevailed amongst his brethren at that 
time, that a Christian must necessarily enjoy the 
full assurance that his sins are forgiven. To 
obtain this, he fasted, and watched, and prayed 



96 



MATTHEW STACH. 



whole nights through, till his strength gave way. 
Reduced now almost to despair, he cried out, 44 Ah 
Lord, take pity on me, I am lost !" 44 But," said 
he, 44 in this time of utter distress, the Friend who 
had sought and found me, though I dared not 
believe it, drew near to my soul, and my ears 
were opened to hear His voice, saying, Peace be 
unto thee. From that time I walked in peace, 
and gave thanks to God in my heart continually, 
though I said nothing to any man of my great 
happiness." 

Frederic Bcehnisch was the son of a miller at 
Kunewald, in Moravia. Like Matthew Stach, he 
enjoyed the blessings of a good example and a 
religious education in his father's house. Although 
forbidden the public exercises of Divine worship 
according to the manner which their consciences ap- 
proved, so that they could participate in no other 
services than those of the Eoman Catholic church, 
the parents of Frederic Bcehnisch, and a few of 
their neighbours who held the same faith as them- 
selves, were accustomed to meet secretly, from 
time to time, to join in the prayers and hymns 
hallowed by the memory of pious forefathers, and 
endeared to the Unitas Fratrum by centuries of 
persecution. At these meetings the Scriptures 
were read and explained, according to their 
ability, by some of the brethren who have already 
been described as acting the part of missionaries 
among their dispersed fellow-religionists. When 
Frederic was about twelve years old, he was per- 



FEEDERTC BCEHNISCH. 



97 



mitted for the first time to attend one of these 
meetings, and was so deeply moved by the prayers 
and exhortations which he heard there, that the 
impression was never effaced from his mind. 
From that day he resolved that, as soon as the 
opportunity should be granted him, he would 
leave his native place, and seek out some spot 
where with his fellow-believers he might worship 
God openly, anct as frequently as he would. " I 
asked," he says, "where such a place could be 
found, and the answer was, 1 In Saxony, which 
lies towards the west.' After that, I went every 
day into our garden, and kneeling down with my 
face towards the west, prayed earnestly, and often 
with tears, that God would bring me to that 
place." Two years had passed away when one of 
the missionary brethren, whose words had so 
deeply moved the heart of Frederic, came again 
to Kunewald. He was about to visit other places 
where families of the brethren lived, dispersed 
amidst the Eoman Catholic population. The lad 
besought permission to accompany him ; but he 
was as yet too young for full reliance to be placed 
on his stedfastness and discretion ; and his father, 
knowing from experience how closely the move- 
ments of the brethren were watched, and fearing 
lest his son might by any means bring their friend 
into trouble, would not consent to his going. 

Shortly afterwards, however, tidings of the 
infant colony which had just been planted at 
Bertholsdorf, reached the dwellers at Eunewald. 

H 



98 



MATTHEW STACH. 



A little company, one of whom was a near kins- 
man of Boehnisch's, determined to migrate thither, 
if possible ; and Frederic entreated that he might 
go with them so earnestly, that his father and 
mother were induced to consent. " We set off," 
he says, "on Palm Sunday, after night-fall, and 
by Easter-day had reached in safety a town where 
Protestants were allowed to celebrate their public 
worship. Here for the first time in my life I 
heard a sermon from a pastor of the Eeformed 
Church. On the following Sunday, we came in 
sight of Bertholsdorf. Only three houses had yet 
been erected on the Jlutberg, and these were not 
finished. But my heart overflowed with joy and 
gratitude, for God had granted my petition and 
brought me to dwell amongst brethren/' The 
strength and sincerity of the boy's religious 
principles were now to be tested by trial. He 
had left the homely plenty and comfort of his 
father's house to cast in his lot with a very poor 
people, but he never repented of his choice. 
Working at any occupation which he could find, 
sometimes as a linen weaver, sometimes as a 
gardener, he was contented and happy with the 
hardest fare. He had been living at Herrnhut 
between three and four years when Matthew 
Stach arrived there : they were nearly of the same 
age, and a warm friendship soon sprang up 
between them. 

The family of John Beck had suffered with 
peculiar severity for their adherence to their 



JOHN BECK. 



99 



faith. His grandfather, crippled by the tortures 
inflicted on him, died young, leaving two sons 
who were taken from their mother to be brought 
up as Eoman Catholics. But in the mind of the 
elder boy the instructions of his parents had taken 
root too deeply to be eradicated. The fruit of 
them appeared in the diligence with which in 
after-life he searched the Scriptures, and sought out 
amongst his neighbours all who had any desire 
to serve God, that he might persuade them to 
join with him in the pursuit of sacred knowledge, 
and other works of piety. More particularly he 
took pains to instruct his little son John in the 
word of God. When the boy was old enough to 
enter into the service of strangers, his father 
dismissed him with these words : " My son, have 
the blessed God always before thy eyes, so shall 
it be well with thee, in time and eternity." " And 
for a time," said John Beck, " I laid this injunc- 
tion much to heart ; though, by degrees, I forgot 
it, and became very indifferent about pleasing 
God. One day, however, while about my master's 
work, I happened to look into a New Testament, 
and lighted upon these words, 4 1 know thy works, 
that thou art neither cold nor hot.' I read the 
verses which follow, and the words were like 
fire, they pierced my very heart." This proved 
the turning point in the life of John Beck. The 
shame and sorrow with which he was filled, on 
account of his lukewarmness and ingratitude 
towards the Saviour, were succeeded by a lively 



100 



MATTHEW STACH. 



faith in the atonement. " I saw Him," he says, 
" as it were crucified before me, and for my sins, 
and was filled with inexpressible thankfulness 
and desire to glorify Him." 

The change which had passed upon the young- 
man quickly attracted the observation of his com- 
rades, to whom, indeed, he spoke freely, warning, 
and entreating them to turn with their hearts to 
the Lord. Some were gained by his exhortations, 
and in their turn began to speak of the Gospel 
among their neighbours. In course of time, many 
were awakened to consider more seriously the 
things that belonged to their peace ; and began 
to meet together to pray and read the Scriptures. 
Amongst their neighbours, some approved, others 
derided this new zeal for religion ; but the au- 
thorities of the neighbourhood were deeply of- 
fended, and put an end to the meetings by arresting 
John Beck and another young man who had taken 
a prominent part in them. The two young men 
were sentenced to be separately confined in irons, 
and to be fed on just so much bread and water 
as was necessary to keep them alive. Beck, in 
particular, was most severely handled, but he 
received grace to be stedfast, and has left it on 
record, that the abiding consciousness of God's 
presence made his prison seem like a home to 
him. When their captivity had lasted some time, 
Beck's fellow-prisoner obtained a little indulgence 
from his gaoler, and was even permitted to walk 
about a little within the gaol. He made use of his 



ESCAPE FROM PRISON. 



101 



liberty to visit the cell where his friend was lying 
in fetters, and together they found means to con- 
cert a plan of escape, as well as to loosen the 
irons. They scaled the walls of the prison suc- 
cessfully, but their flight was discovered before 
they had got half a mile from the town. Though 
hotly pursued, however, they contrived to creep 
into the thickets and hide themselves, and, in the 
end, made good their escape. Having neither 
money nor food, they begged their way towards 
Breslau, where one of them had some Lutheran 
acquaintances, amongst whom they hoped to find 
shelter. But while they were still far from that 
town, a poor farmer, struck with pity at their 
famished way-worn appearance, took them to his 
house, and charitably entertained them for some 
days. Finding that they were refugees from 
Moravia, he spoke to them of Herrnhut. It was 
the first time they had heard of the settlement 
formed there, but they at once resolved to go 
thither rather than to Breslau ; and after en- 
countering many more hardships, arrived safely 
at the asylum of their brethren, in the summer 
of 1732. 

Count Zinzendorf, the benevolent benefactor of 
the community at Herrnhut, had already begun 
to direct their attention to the deplorable state 
of the heathen world. An earnest desire to be 
instrumental in spreading the word of life among 
pagan nations had taken possession of his mind 
during his studies at the university, but was not 



102 



MATTHEW STACH. 



called into exercise until the year 1731, when he 
attended the coronation of Christian VI. at Copen- 
hagen. In that city he met with two Greenlanders 
who had been baptized by the venerable Mr. Egede, 
and learned with pain that the mission to Green- 
land was to be relinquished. His domestics also 
conversed with a baptized negro from St. Thomas, 
who earnestly entreated that Christian missionaries 
might be sent to his enslaved countrymen. He 
appeared deeply interested in the fate of his sister, 
whom he had left behind in that island, and who, 
he said, frequently besought the great God to send 
some one who might show her the way to Him. 
The count afforded him an opportunity of stating 
his case in a public meeting of the brethren at 
Herrnhut, where his representations and en- 
treaties proved so effectual, that two of those 
present, Leonard Dober and another, offered to 
go to St. Thomas, though under the persuasion 
that they would be obliged to sell themselves 
for slaves in order to gain access to the negroes. 
They set sail August 21st, 1732, ten years after 
the foundation of Herrnhut. 

At the same time the plan of a mission to 
Greenland was also agitated. As that country 
was under the protection of the Danish govern- 
ment, which was very friendly to the brethren, 
it appeared the more eligible for the establishment 
of a mission. Matthew Stach and Frederic Bosh- 
nisch, had both, unknown to each other, formed 
the design of offering themselves for this service. 



MISSION TO GREENLAND. .103 

After a minute inquiry into their motives for such 
an undertaking, the offer was accepted, but the 
mission to St. Thomas having exhausted the 
resources of the little community for that year, 
the commencement of the Greenland mission was 
deferred until January, 1733. In the mean time 
Frederic Boehnisch had been despatched on a long 
journey to transact some business for his brethren, 
and in his absence, Christian Stach consented to 
accompany his cousin Matthew. Christian David 
went with them, on account of their youth and 
inexperience, intending to return to Europe, as 
soon as he had seen the mission fairly established. 
With scarcely any provision for their journey 
beyond the most necessary articles of clothing, 
our missionaries travelled by way of Hamburgh to 
the Danish capital. Here they met with a kind 
reception from Professor Ewald, member of the 
College of Missions, and other friends to whom 
they had been recommended. Their intention of 
going to Greenland was, however, regarded as 
a visionary scheme, particularly while the fate 
of the Danish mission at Godhaab was yet in 
suspense. But they took little notice of the 
gloomy forebodings which met their ears, believ- 
ing that He who had called them to the work, 
would support them in the prosecution of it. 
They learned shortly after that his majesty had 
granted leave for one more vessel to sail to 
Godhaab, and applied to the king's chamberlain 
for permission to take their passage in her. 



104 



MATTHEW STACH. 



Their first audience of this minister was not a 
little discouraging. Indeed, it might well seem 
strange to him that young men, who possessed 
no advantages of study or experience, should hope 
to succeed, where the indefatigable exertions of 
the pious and learned Egede had accomplished 
so little. But being convinced, by a closer ac- 
quaintance, of the solidity of their faith, and the 
rectitude of their intentions, he became their 
firm friend, willingly presented their memorial 
to the king, and exerted all his influence in their 
behalf; making use, it is said, of this argument, 
that God hath, in all ages, employed things which 
are weak, unlearned, and of no account, in the 
world's estimation, as instruments in the accom- 
plishment of His great designs, in order that man 
might ascribe the honour to Him alone, and not 
rely on his own power and sagacity. The king, 
moved by the representations of his minister, con- 
sented to their request, and wrote with his own 
hand a recommendatory letter to Mr. Egede. The 
chamberlain also introduced them to several 
persons distinguished by their rank and piety, 
who generously contributed towards the expense 
of their voyage and intended settlement. Being 
asked one day how they proposed to maintain 
themselves in Greenland, they answered that they 
depended on the labour of their own hands and 
God's blessing ; and that, not to be burdensome to 
any one, they would build themselves a house 
and cultivate the ground. It being objected that 



THE DAILY WOED. 



105 



they would find no wood to build with, as the 
country presented little but a face of barren rock ; 
k ' Then," replied they, " we will dig into the 
earth and lodge there." " No," said the cham- 
berlain, 4 'you shall not be reduced to that ne- 
cessity. Here are fifty dollars ; buy timber, and 
take it out with you." With this and other do- 
nations, they purchased poles, planks, and laths ; 
instruments for agriculture, masonry, and car- 
penter s work ; several sorts of seeds and roots j 
implements of fishing and hunting; household 
furniture, books, paper, and provisions. 

Thus equipped they took a grateful leave of the 
court where they had been so hospitably enter- 
tained, and embarked on board the king's ship 
Caritas, on the 10th April. The congregation 
at Herrnhut had adopted the custom of annually 
compiling a collection of Scripture texts for every 
day in the year. This text was called the Daily 
Word ; it supplied a subject for private meditation 
and a theme for the public discourses. It was 
long remembered by the brethren that the Daily 
Word for that 10th of April, when their mis- 
sionaries embarked upon an undertaking which 
so often appeared to baffle all hope, was (Heb. 
xi. 1), " Faith is the substance of things hoped 
for, the evidence of things not seen." In that 
faith they set sail, nor were they confounded by 
the unspeakable difficulties of following years, 
until, at last, they and their brethren in Europe 
beheld the fulfilment of their hopes. On the 



106 



MATTHEW STACH. 



thirty-third day of the voyage they came in sight 
of the coast of Greenland, but a violent tempest of 
four days' continuance, preceded by a total eclipse 
of the sun, drove them back sixty leagues. On the 
20th May, they cast anchor in Baal's Eiver, and 
joyfully welcomed the snowy cliffs and savage in- 
habitants of a country which had so long been the 
chief subject of their thoughts. 

Immediately on landing they repaired to Mr. 
Egede, who received them with a cordial wel- 
come, and confirmed their hope that, dark as 
was the present aspect of affairs, the light of 
the Lord should yet dawn upon Greenland. 
Their first care was to find a spot on which to 
plant their intended habitation. They selected 
a piece of ground between the harbour and the 
factory or village of Godhaab, on the south-west 
side of a small peninsula, the outermost edge of 
which formed three strands, between which the 
rocks projected into the sea. Between the rocks 
the beach was fenced with a dam of pebbles 
thrown up by the waves. It rose with a gradual 
acclivity, and ended in a small valley watered by 
a rivulet. Here, about a mile distant from the 
edge of the sea, they determined to fix their 
abode, and as the erection of the house, for which 
their friends in Denmark had presented them 
with timber, would be a work of time, they 
raised a hut of turf and stones, Greenland fashion, 
to shelter them during its progress. It was 
now June, yet the weather was so piercingly 



a missionary's letters. 107 

cold that the sods froze in their hands while they 
built. 

In the middle of the month the Caritas sailed 
on her homeward voyage. From the letters 
which Matthew Stach sent by it to the congre- 
gation at Herrnhut, a few passages are here 
extracted. " Brethren and sisters, beloved in 
Jesus, through whose grace we have life : God 
who is rich in loving-kindness has brought us in 
peace to this land. That which we sought we 
have found ; a people knowing nothing of their 
Maker. They care for nothing excepting to catch 
seals, fish, and reindeer, and in quest of these they 
wander up and down continually. We long to 
learn their language and tell them of God, of His 
Son Jesus, of the Holy Spirit; we long to seek 
them out and make them our friends, but know 
not how to come at them, for to-day they are here, 
to-morrow there ; on the islands, on the shores, 
away beyond our reach. Did we foresee how 
many difficulties would obstruct this undertaking 
when, at Herrnhut, we resolved to attempt it? 
To that question I answer, there is a true saying, 
4 The man who keeps his faith cannot lose his 
way.' Our way is shut up, so that we see it not. 
But it is our daily lesson, To be still in the Lord. 
All is well with us outwardly, but our hearts long 
to win souls, and towards this we can as yet do 
nothing. By the grace of God, we will not 
despond, but watch for the Lord. When His 
time comes to favour this land, its darkness shall 



108 



MATTHEW STACH. 



be turned into light, and the ice-cold hearts of its 
people shall be thawed. While our way is up- 
right before Him, we are not troubled though men 
esteem us fools, and truly we are fools in the 
eyes of many who know this land and its in- 
habitants." 

To the young men who had been more especially 
his companions, he writes: "I address, you, my 
brethren, from a land where the Name of Jesus is 
not yet known. Here the Sun of Eighteousness 
has not shined, but you live in the light of His 
meridian beams. Has He yet warmed your 
hearts? or are some of you still frozen? It 
were better to have lived in Greenland and 
never heard of Jesus, than to have the light 
shining all around you, and yet not to arise 
and walk as children of the light. But you 
who have known the Saviour, may you be es- 
tablished in grace. My heart is listed with 
yours under the banner of the cross. To Christ 
will I live, to Him will I die. Let us animate 
each other to follow the Lamb without the camp. 
The salvation is great, and the harvest will be 
glorious, when we have sown much seed and 
watered it with many tears. Eemember your 
meanest brother constantly in your prayers." 

All the honest warmth and confidence expressed 
by the writer were needed to sustain himself 
and his brother missionaries under the various 
difficulties which lay before them, and which were 
greater in some respects than those which had 



DANGERS AND HARDSHIPS. 



109 



obstructed the labours of Egede. It was necessary, 
in order to the very existence of their mission, 
that they should toil much, both with head and 
hand in occupations which were new to them. 
Natives of a country which lay remote from the 
sea, they were totally inexperienced in navigation. 
Nor were they much better acquainted with the 
arts of the fisher and fowler. Now, however, 
fish, birds, and reindeer must be caught, to eke 
out their slender stock of European provisions ; 
and drift-wood must be gathered on the shores 
and islands during the summer months, to provide 
firing for the long Arctic winter. The mis- 
sionaries had purchased an old boat from the 
captain of the Caritas, and whenever the weather 
would permit, they went out in search of food 
or fuel. But, as may easily be imagined, they 
encountered many dangers and endured many 
hungry days of disappointed labour, before they 
learnt how to manage a boat in those stormy 
ice-encumbered seas ; or became sufficiently 
expert in hunting and fishing to obtain an 
adequate supply of food. They were the more 
desirous to acquire some skill in navigation* 
because it was only by means of boat voyages 
that they could hope to become acquainted with a 
wandering people, scattered along the shores of 
a hundred creeks and fiords. These occupations, 
however, needful and onerous as they were, 
did not cause them so many anxious thoughts 
as the study of the native language. Mr. Egede 



110 



MATTHEW STACH. 



kindly put into their hands the grammar and 
vocabulary and other papers which he had drawn 
up, that they might make copies of these 
manuscripts for themselves ; and his sons fre- 
quently assisted their studies by explaining the 
grammatical rules and remarks which their 
father had written down. But when it is re- 
membered that Matthew Stach and his associates 
had never before seen a grammar, and knew not 
the meaning of the terms employed ; and moreover 
that they were obliged to learn Danish before 
they could understand their instructors ; it will 
not be thought wonderful, that the difficulties 
which had proved formidable to Egede appeared 
to these unlearned students to be almost insur- 
mountable. 

Christian David was too old to engage in the 
study of the language with any hope of success. 
He occupied himself with matters of household 
economy, and with the building of the mission 
dwelling, which was sufficiently advanced to be 
habitable before the winter set in. The hut 
which had hitherto served the brethren for a 
home, was preserved, in hope that by the time 
they had acquired a sufficient knowledge of 
Greenlandic to converse with the natives, in- 
quirers would often visit the station, to whom 
the hut might afford a temporary shelter, if the 
missionaries could persuade them to remain a 
while. The mission-house contained, besides 
the necessary rooms for the brethren a larger 



RAVAGES OF SMALL-POX. 



Ill 



apartment designed to be used as a chapel and 
schoolroom ; and ardently the young men hoped 
and longed to see it filled with native scholars 
and worshippers. Christian David sympathized 
in their desire, but was far less sanguine in 
hope. " I built the first dwelling for the mis- 
sionaries, and the first school-house for the natives," 
he said, when better days had come, "but little 
expected that the dwelling would continue to 
be inhabited, or that the school-room would 
ever become too small." At present, the station 
which the missionaries, in remembrance of their 
German home, called New Herrnhut, was visited 
not unfrequently by a few natives, but they came 
only to beg or to purloin such articles as suited 
their fancy, and, as if inspired by the very spirit 
of mischief, they stole away the manuscripts on 
which their hosts were bestowing so much labour. 
Both house and hut, however, were soon to be 
filled even to crowding, but it was with sick and 
dying sufferers, not with scholars in the Word of 
God. 

The first and most terrible outbreak of small- 
pox in Greenland, and the manner in which 
the country round Godhaab was depopulated by 
it, have been described in the memoir of Egede. 
Following the example of that venerable man, 
the Moravian brethren went from place to place 
to visit and succour the sick, many of whom 
they received and nursed under their own roof. 
There were very few instances in which the 



112 



MATTHEW STACH. 



care bestowed on the sufferers was rewarded 
by their recovery, and of all those who caught 
the fatal infection, scarcely one in a hundred 
survived. From nurses, the brethren became 
patients. Their health had been much impaired 
by the fatigue and other distressing circum- 
stances which attended their care of the sick, 
and as winter advanced the extreme cold caused 
them to be attacked with scurvy, so that they 
could at times hardly move their limbs. But 
they accounted it a great instance of God's 
merciful care over them that they were never 
all three reduced to helplessness at the same 
time. Each in his turn was able to wait upon 
the others. In these scenes of sickness and sor- 
row the winter months passed away. When spring 
returned, the invaluable scurvy -grass, which had 
shot up plentifully beneath the snow, proved 
an effectual remedy for the disorder of the 
missionaries. But the small-pox lingered among 
the natives far into the summer, and for many 
leagues around Godhaab and New Herrnhut, 
the land was without inhabitants. AYhen the 
Danish factors made their customary trading 
voyages they found only empty huts, and un- 
buried corpses, often half devoured by foxes 
and ravens. And at the various sealing and 
fishing stations, to which, at that time of year, 
numerous companies of Greenland ers from distant 
places usually resorted, not a tent was to be seen 
on the shore, or a kayak upon the waters. The 



BECK AND BCEHNISCH SAIL FOR GREENLAND. 113 

natives shunned all that coast, and the islands 
which lay near it, as the nest of the plague. 

Christian David, and Christian Stach, seeing 
that the country had thus become a mere wilder- 
ness, thought it would be useless to remain, 
and resolved to take the first opportunity of 
returning to Europe, and seeking a more promis- 
ing field of labour. But Matthew Stach, notwith- 
standing all discouragements, was determined 
not to abandon his post, even though long years 
of disappointed hope should be his portion, as 
they had been that of Egede. And before his 
companions could put their resolution to quit the 
country into effect, their drooping hearts were 
cheered by the arrival of fresh labourers. The 
king of Denmark had expressed a wish that 
the number of missionaries from Herrnhut might 
be increased. Accordingly, John Beck and 
Frederic Boehnisch were chosen, and willingly 
undertook this work. They repaired first to 
Berlin, where Dr. Jablonsky, a senior, or bishop 
of the United Brethren, who was also the king's 
chaplain, received them with much kindness, 
and set them forward on their way with prayer. 
At Copenhagen, where they were detained two 
months, they found a good friend in Baron 
von Scelenthal, Governor of the Crown Prince. 
Through his interposition they obtained a pas- 
sage to Greenland, free of expense, in a ship which 
was proceeding thither, laden with materials for 
the erection of a new colony at Disko. He pre- 

1 



114 



MATTHEW STACH. 



sented them also with a quantity of meal, and 
other articles of food necessary for their support. 
A portion of these valuable stores they took 
with them ; but there being very little room on 
board the ship, they were obliged to leave the 
remainder to be forwarded by another vessel. 
Now began their first experience of the outward 
trials of missionary life. The friendly feeling 
which had been manifested towards them in 
Copenhagen had no existence on board the ship ; 
and their voyage, though less tempestuous than 
that of their predecessors, was rendered very 
painful by the mockeries, abusive ]anguage, and 
hard treatment which were their daily portion. 
Glad indeed were they when the friendly coun- 
tenance of Christian David greeted them at 
Disko. The vessel which preceded theirs had put 
in at Godhaab, and brought tidings of the new 
settlement about to be founded, and Christian 
David had been engaged to assist in the erection 
of the buildings. To this good work Beck and 
Boehnisch also lent a hand ; till the ship sailed 
again for Godhaab, where their arrival caused great 
joy to the Stachs, and dispelled all Christian's 
desire to quit the country. 

Encouraging one another to pray and labour, 
the missionaries diligently pursued their out- 
door occupations and their study of the language. 
By practice they became tolerably skilful fisher- 
men, and supplied themselves with food ; and not- 
withstanding several misadventures from stormy 



WANT OF AN INTERPRETER. 



115 



weather, they visited various parts of the coast, 
and increased their knowledge of the country and 
its inhabitants. But their longest voyages, one of 
which extended one hundred miles to the south, 
and another an equal distance northwards, were 
undertaken in company of the traders, to whom 
their assistance was not unwelcome in a perilous 
navigation, attended with storms of rain and snow, 
and contrary winds. The natives whom they met 
with in these distant excursions appeared more 
inclined to welcome their visits than any with 
whom they had yet made acquaintance. At first, 
seeing that the missionaries assisted readily in 
every kind of manual labour, the Greenlanders 
supposed that they were the factor's servants, and 
treated them with contempt ; but finding that this 
was not the case, and observing the gentle friendly 
demeanour of the strangers, the natives invited 
them to come into their tents, and sought to con- 
verse with them. Without an interpreter neither 
party was very intelligible to the other, yet the 
people were pleased ; they desired the mission- 
aries to repeat their visit another year, and pro- 
mised to return it when, in the course of their 
journeyings, they came into the neighbourhood of 
Godhaab. These expressions of goodwill cheered 
the brethren in their application to the language, 
which they still found full of difficulties. The 
pronunciation, the numerous affixes and inflections, 
the great variety of words expressive of common 
objects and ideas, so that the slightest shades of 



116 



MATTHEW STACH. 



difference in a thing were distinguished by appro- 
priate terms, all these required long patience, and 
the practice of years. They received valuable 
help at this time from Paul Egede, who had lately 
returned from Denmark. He set apart time every 
week for teaching them to speak and translate ; 
and it was not long before they found themselves 
able to talk about the common objects and affairs 
of life with sufficient accuracy to be easily under- 
stood by the natives. 

When the brethren attempted to enter upon 
religious subjects, they discovered, as Mr. Egede 
had done before them, that it was hardly possible 
to find appropriate words by which to express 
their meaning. They wisely resolved to refrain 
from speaking upon sacred things, until they were 
better acquainted with the language, lest they 
should confuse the minds of the natives, and 
expose the Christian doctrine to ridicule, by the 
employment of incongruous or equivocal words. 
Notwithstanding their adherence to this rule, 
some misunderstandings arose. For instance, a 
curious misconception was caused by their use of 
the Danish word Gud, which signifies God. When 
the brethren began to speak to the Greenlanders 
of the Almighty Creator of all things, not know- 
ing by what native word to express with sufficient 
solemnity the name of the Divine Being, they had 
recourse to the Danish Gud, which was likely to 
be already known to some of the people through 
their frequent intercourse with the Danes. But 



NATIVES VISIT NEW HEERNHUT. 117 

the missionaries did not know that the Greenlandic 
possessed a word precisely similar in sound, signi- 
fying rivers. They learnt afterwards that many of 
the natives were much astonished that the strangers 
should speak so earnestly about the existence of 
rivers, which no one ever doubted ; and one man 
being asked if he believed in Gud, answered, in- 
dignantly, " Why should I not believe in that ? 
I have heard its voice ;" meaning the roar of the 
torrents which gush from the glaciers. While 
unable to speak on religious subjects, the brethren 
took such opportunities as they could find, of 
reading to the people portions of Scripture, short 
prayers, etc., which Mr. Egede had translated. 
One day, when Matthew Stach had been reading 
a prayer to a party of natives, they told him 
that he had spoken good Greenlandic, but added, 
" We do not understand what you mean ; ' Being 
redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ,' 4 knowing 
Christ,' — this language is too high to enter into 
our ears." 

Two years had now elapsed since the terrible 
visitation of small-pox, and the natives no longer 
shunned the neighbourhood of Baal's Kiver. The 
people frequenting the fishing stations near God- 
haab paid frequent visits to New Herrnhut. Some 
came to ask for food, some for a night's lodging, 
others for knives, needles, fish-hooks, etc. ; not 
one in fifty had any higher motive for resorting to 
the mission-house than curiosity, or the hope of 
gain. Some of them, indeed, openly declared, that 



118 



MATTHEW STACH. 



if the missionaries did not continue to give them 
stock-fish, they would no longer listen to their 
words. Brit selfish, and thievish also, as were 
most of their visitors, the missionaries would not 
drive them away. By persevering kindness they 
hoped to win, sooner or later, some of these people 
to better things; and they were pleased to see 
that a few who had remained -with them till the 
hour of their evening worship, and had witnessed 
their meeting for prayer and psalmody, seemed to 
be unusually interested, begged permission to 
come again, and asked many questions as to the 
intention of the missionaries, desiring to know 
why they knelt down? to whom they spoke, &c, 
&c. Besides their daily meetings for prayer, the 
brethren set apart an hour every evening for con- 
versing together respecting their mission, and 
communicating the various difficulties, hopes, and 
apprehensions which the subject suggested to their 
minds, that each might profit by the experience of 
all. And that nothing might prevent the closest 
union between them, as brothers engaged in one 
common work, they resolved each to examine him- 
self — whether he believed that his call to this 
mission was of God, and was resolved never to 
abandon it, what trials soever he might have to 
endure, until he could conscientiously say that he 
had fulfilled his duty as a faithful servant to the 
utmost possible extent ; or until God, in His pro- 
vidence, should remove him from this field of 
labour ? They revolved these questions in their 



SOLEMN AGREEMENT. 



119 



minds during some weeks before they communi- 
cated to one another the results of their self- 
inquiry. 

It then appeared that Christian Stachhad never 
considered himself bound to devote the whole of 
his life to the service of the heathen ; he had 
rather Undertaken the voyage to Greenland upon 
trial, and to supply the place of an absent 
brother. Nevertheless he would remain in his 
present position till God should remove him, or 
till called away by the congregation of the breth- 
ren in Europe. Christian David had been sent 
to Greenland, for the purpose of aiding his two 
young inexperienced brethren to lay the founda- 
tion of a mission settlement ; and as this had now 
been done, he intended the next summer to re- 
turn to Herrnhut, and again place his services at 
the disposal of the brethren there. Soon after- 
wards he took his departure, not without the pro- 
mise that the Greenland mission should have a 
chief place in his prayers, as well as every service 
which he could render it by his exertions in 
Europe. Matthew Stach, Erederic Boehnisch, and 
John Beck had given themselves to the mission, 
for life or for death, resolving to believe where 
they could not see, and to hope even against hope. 
Nor would they relinquish their enterprise, till 
they could appeal to God, with the testimony of 
their conscience, that they had done all that man 
could do. And they bound themselves at this 
time by a solemn agreement : 1. To keep in 



120 



MATTHEW STACH. 



mind that they had come to that country, resting 
themselves upon God their Saviour, in whom all 
the nations of the earth shall be blessed. 2. To 
labour both by word and deed, as God should give 
them ability, to make known that Jesus hath 
redeemed mankind by the shedding of His own 
blood ; that by this doctrine the hearts of the 
heathen might be brought to the obedience of 
faith. 3. To dwell together in brotherly love, 
each acknowledging the spiritual gifts bestowed 
by God upon his brethren, in honour preferring 
one another. 4. To perform their various secular 
labours diligently and heartily, as unto the Lord, 
but not to give way to anxious thoughts about the 
supply of their temporal wants, casting their 
cares upon Him who feeds the sparrows and 
clothes the flowers of the field. They sealed this 
agreement by partaking together of the Lord's 
Supper. 

Soon did the missionaries need all the comfort 
that could be derived from their consciousness of 
unanimity, for the sincerity and strength of their 
faith was about to be severely tested. The libe- 
rality with which an eminent benefactor at the 
Danish court provided for the supply of their 
wants in a former year has been mentioned. Since 
that time no provisions had reached them. Even 
the stores which Frederic Bcehnisch and John 
Beck had left behind, were forgotten by the per- 
sons who should have forwarded them, and were 
never sent to Greenland. The fishing and hunt- 



EXTREME PRIVATIONS. 



121 



ing seasons of 1735 had been extremely unfavour- 
able ; there was a general scarcity of food in the 
colony, and the missionaries had been unable to 
lay up any stock of fish or reindeer's flesh. Their 
salted provisions were exhausted, and nothing re- 
mained to them but a very small quantity of meal 
and pease, and a few ship biscuits. Christian 
David, who was now on his voyage home, would 
make known their need to the brethren at Herrn- 
hut ; but winter was close at hand, and many 
months must necessarily elapse before any ships 
would reach the colony. The Danish settlers 
compassionated their distress, but were powerless 
to relieve it, being themselves straitened for pro- 
visions. 

The only resource left to the brethren was to 
purchase seals' flesh from the Greenlanders, if 
they could prevail on them to part with any. For 
none of the Europeans were at all expert at 
catching these creatures ; only the natives, in 
their kayaks, which they managed with inimitable 
dexterity, were successful in the seal-hunt. But 
the Greenlanders were most unwilling to part 
with any portion of their spoils ; and even the men 
who, during a former winter, had been most 
liberally relieved by the bounty of the mission- 
aries, refused now to sell them a morsel of food at 
any price. In extenuation of this ungrateful sel- 
fishness, it must be remembered that the natives 
ordinarily passed their lives (and especially dur- 
ing the winter) in alternate fasting and feasting. 



122 



MATTHEW STACH. 



When provisions were plentiful, the people would 
prolong their repasts through whole nights, gorg- 
ing themselves to a degree which appeared in- 
comprehensible to Europeans. But when tem- 




SEAL-FISHING IN GREENLAND. 



pestuous weather, or excessive accumulations of 
ice, prevented them from obtaining seals, or other 
food, they were forced to sustain life, for days and 
weeks together, by eating seaweed, the leather of 
their boots, old tent skins, &c., &c. Nor was there 
a year in which many persons did not die of want. 
The brethren now esteemed themselves happy if 
they could find a sufficiency of mussels and sea- 
weed to allay the pangs of hunger. The small 



MANY PERILS ENCOUNTERED. 



123 



remnant of their meal they eked out, as far as 
possible, by boiling it with some of their old 
tallow candles ; and revolting as this mess would 
have seemed to them but a few weeks before, they 
were thankful for it now. In the extreme cold of 
the Arctic regions, some portion of animal fat or 
oil, however coarse its nature, appears absolutely 
necessary to sustain man's life. 

They encountered many perils in searching for 
food. Their boat was so worn out that it was 
hardly fit for use, even in the calmest weather, 
but the urgency of their need compelled them to 
venture out in it. One day when they were 
returning home, and had nearly reached the 
shore, a sudden squall drove them back several 
miles, and obliged them to take refuge on a rocky 
island, where, the wind continuing contrary, they 
were forced to remain four nights, wet to the 
skin with rain and spray. Another time, their 
strength failing them after long plying at the oar, 
they halted for the night at an uninhabited spot, 
which afforded them no other shelter than a hole 
which they dug out in the snow, and in which 
they lay down till they were sufficiently rested to 
keep themselves warm by running. Happily for 
them, it was yet too early for the extreme cold of 
winter. The natives who witnessed the poverty 
and privations of the brethren, were astonished 
that they should choose to live at a distance from 
their own country, in so mean and miserable a 
condition, and were not sparing in their expres- 



124 



MATTHEW STAGS. 



sions of contempt for this folly, as it appeared to 
them. " Your countrymen," they would often 
say, " must be worthless people, since they send 
you nothing, and you will be fools if you stay 
here." In all this time of adversity, the hope and 
fortitude of the brethren were sustained by the 
belief that their heavenly Father would not for- 
sake them. " We know not," they wrote in their 
journal, " what He intends to do with us. We 
can only observe that other trials await us. As 
little do we comprehend what His secret hand has 
been doing among the heathen. Gross darkness 
appears still to cover their hearts and minds. 
Yet we believe that at length the work shall pros- 
per ; and when He has tried and proved us, He 
will not fail to let us see His glory." 

Many instances of God's providential care are 
gratefully recorded in the journals of the mission. 
For example, the finding of a dead " white whale," 
which the missionaries and the boatmen of the 
Danish settlement shared between them, and found 
the flesh s< red like beef, and not unlike it in 
flavour." The gift of a young porpoise, bestowed 
on them by a Greenlander who had caught the 
dam. The being driven by a contrary wind to 
some rocks where they espied an eagle sitting 
upon its nest, shot it, and having with some diffi- 
culty clambered up, found four large eggs, as well 
as the dead bird, which, besides food, supplied 
them with quills, an article of which they were 
greatly in want. But more than by all these 



PROVIDENTIAL SUPPLIES. 



125 



reliefs and alleviations, their distress was miti- 
gated, and their hearts were comforted, by the 
seasonable kindness of a native, named Ippegau, 
who came from a distance of thirty leagues south- 
ward to visit them. They had seen him only 
once before. During one of their summer excur- 
sions, when they had lost their way, and were row- 
ing about bewildered amongst islands unknown 
to them, they accidentally encountered Ippegau. 
He behaved to them in a very friendly manner, 
and set them on their way homewards ; and now, 
in the time of their deep distress, though he knew 
not of it, his heart was moved to seek them out, 
and to offer to sell them regularly all the seal's 
flesh he could spare. As spring advanced, this 
resource failed them, and they became so feeble 
for want of proper nourishment, that they could no 
longer row their boat. Still they trusted in God, 
and their confidence was not put to shame. 

One day in May, when they had just returned 
hungry and weary from an unsuccessful search 
after food, word was brought them that a Dutch 
ship had arrived off the coast, having on board a 
cask of provisions consigned to them. This most 
welcome gift came from a friend in Amsterdam, to 
whom they were personally unknown. It was 
accompanied by a letter from the donor, who re- 
quested that the missionaries would inform him of 
their circumstances and wants ; and in after years 
the mission was materially assisted by the contri- 
butions of this generous benefactor and his friends. 



126 



MATTHEW STACH. 



The supplies which he had now forwarded, not 
only relieved them from present distress, but 
helped to avert similar sufferings in the succeed- 
ing winter. For the community at Herrnhut, 
composed as it was of poor exiles labouring for 
their daily bread, was able to forward but a scanty 
stock of necessaries to the brethren in Greenland, 
where, however, the mission household was about 
to be augmented by the arrival of Matthew Stach's 
widowed mother and his two sisters, the elder of 
whom was twenty-two, the younger only twelve 
years of age. They came out to take charge of the 
domestic concerns of the mission, and to labour 
in any way which might be opened to them for 
the good of the Greenland women and children. 
Matthew immediately began to teach his sisters 
Greenlandic, in which their progress, and espe- 
cially that of Anna, the youngest, surpassed his 
expectations. Both eventually became wives of 
missionaries, and were spared to labour to old age 
in the service of the mission. 

Towards the close of summer, Christian Stach 
embarked for Europe, that he might take counsel 
with the brethren at Herrnhut, and elsewhere, 
about the state and prospects of the mission. 
Having first visited Germany, he proceeded to 
England and Holland, in both of which countries 
resided some principal friends of the brethren. 
To these he communicated all that had been done, 
and prayed for their advice concerning the future 
prosecution of the work. Some useful suggestions 



A NEW MISSIONARY. 



127 



were offered, but it was the general opinion that 
much must be left to the Christian discretion of 
the labourers, in so new and distant a field. The 
only rule laid down was, that when the mission- 
aries should, at length, be so favoured as to gather 
souls from amongst the heathen unto Christ, their 
ministrations in the native congregations should 
be conducted, as nearly as possible, in conformity 
with the ritual and discipline which were ob- 
served by the United Brethren in Europe. With 
respect to the temporal circumstances of the mis- 
sion, Count Zinzendorf and other friends lost no 
time in taking the necessary steps to prevent the 
recurrence of such seasons of privation and dis- 
tress as Christian and his companions had en- 
dured the last year. 

Although the present aspect of the mission was 
so unpromising, Christian Stach's account of it 
awoke lively sympathy in many hearts. In 
Holland a young man named Margraf, desired 
permission to join in the work. He was accord- 
ingly set apart for missionary service, and tra- 
velled with Stach to Copenhagen, whence they 
sailed for Greenland, after receiving an assurance 
of the king's approbation couched in very gracious 
terms. Margraf, however, was not able to labour 
long in that rigorous climate. The hard bodily 
as well as mental toil, which fell to the lot of each 
of the missionaries, joined to the extreme cold, 
proved too much for his strength. The first year 
of his residence in the country was remarkable for 



128 



MATTHEW STACH. 



the unusual severity of the winter. The journal 
of one of the European residents records, that 
spirits froze like water though placed near the 
fire ; the salted meat was hewn out of the barrels 
like lumps of solid ice, and when put into the pot 
the outside was thoroughly boiled before the in- 
side could be pierced with a knife. In the chimney 
of his room the ice extended down the pipe to the 
very mouth of the stove, though a fire was kept 
burning all day, and when he rose in the morning 
the pillows of the bed were thickly coated with 
hoar frost from the congelation of his breath during 
the night. 

Before the frost set in, the brethren had voyaged 
southward among a multitude of islands, where 
they found some natives whom they had seen 
before, and also their old friend Ippegau. He 
gave them a friendly reception, but when they 
endeavoured to discourse with him on religious 
subjects he was little inclined to listen. The 
other Greenlanders plainly intimated, that al- 
though they were well pleased to receive a visit 
from the missionaries, they did not wish them to 
remain long in that neighbourhood. Matthew 
Stach, however, anxious to improve his know- 
ledge of the language, prevailed upon thein to 
allow him to continue amongst them for a few 
weeks. He found his hosts very changeable : 
" Sometimes," he writes, " they listen while I 
read a passage of Scripture, tell me they believe 
all I say, and desire me to remain longer, that I 



CHRISTMAS AT NEW HERRNHUT. 129 

may tell them more. At another time they turn 
angrily away, and bid me hold my peace." Worse 
than this, they frequently made the sacred things 
of which he spoke the subjects of profane ridicule 
and jesting. "My soul," he says, "is often in a 
flame when they mock my God." All the children' 
were his friends, and would run to meet him 
whenever he appeared. Sometimes a little group 
gathered round him to listen quietly while he 
talked, and asked them questions, striving to in- 
sinuate into their young minds some notions of 
Christian truth. But these fits of attention were 
short-lived, as may be supposed. 

Matthew returned to New Herrnhut in time to 
celebrate the Christmas festival with his brethren. 
Never had they been more keenly sensible of the 
contrast between the joyful remembrances and 
hopes which inspired their own hearts at that 
sacred season, and the cheerless ignorance and 
unbelief which pervaded the minds of the Green- 
landers. Yet the missionaries were not without 
a lively expectation, almost a presentiment, that 
the long night of heathen darkness was drawing 
to its close. "Let us believe," they write to 
their friends in Germany, " that the Lord will 
still do glorious things in Greenland. Do not 
cease your supplications that God would display 
His power in the hearts of this poor people." It 
may be mentioned here that the brethren had 
hitherto supposed it necessary to declare to the 
natives in the first place, the being and attributes 

K 



130 



MATTHEW STACH. 



of God, His righteous laws, and the punishment 
which must overtake those who transgress them. 
They had, indeed, laid it down as a rule, that 
their chief object should be to proclaim the re- 
demption of fallen man by the Lord Jesus Christ, 
but they thought it necessary first of all to im- 
press the minds of the Greenlanders with a sense 
of accountability to an Almighty, All-just Creator, 
and with a conviction that they were deeply 
guilty and sinful in His sight. Little or no effect 
had, however, been produced by this mode of 
instruction, and the brethren were about to be 
taught by experience that there was a wiser, 
more effectual way, of reaching the hearts of their 
hearers. 

At the beginning of June, a party of South- 
landers on their way to some of the summer fish- 
ing-stations, called at New Herrnhut. They were 
strangers to the missionaries, and came from a 
part of the country where neither the Christian 
teachers, nor the things which they taught, had 
yet been heard of. All the brethren, excepting 
John Beck, were absent, engaged in various out- 
door occupations ; Beck was writing out a trans- 
lation of the Four Evangelists. The strangers 
watched him for a little while with surprise, 
and then asked what he was doing. He ex- 
plained the nature of his employment to them, 
as well as he could, upon which they further re- 
quested that he would tell them what he had 
written. He read a few passages to them, and 



STRANGERS COME TO BECK. 



131 



then entering into conversation with them, asked 
if the spirit within them, which understood, and 
thought, and hoped, and feared, would die when 
the body died. All answered, " No." " But," said 
John Beck, " where will the spirit be when the 
body has perished ?" Some said, " Up yonder," 
pointing to the sky; others, " Down beneath the 
sea." For the Greenlanders entertained various 
notions concerning the abode of departed spirits ; 
some placing it under the earth, or in the depths 
of the ocean, and supposing the deep chasms in 
the rocks to be the avenues which led to it ; and 
others fixing it on high, above the rainbow. 
" And who," continued John Beck, 64 made the 
body which dies, and the spirit which dies not, 
and the earth, and sea, and sky ?" They replied, 
" We do not know ; no one has ever told us. But 
it must certainly have been some very great and 
mighty one." " Truly," said John Beck, " it was 
One who has all might, all wisdom, all goodness, 
who created the heavens, and the earth, and all 
things that are therein. He made all things good, 
and last of all He created man in His own image, 
to love Him and to be perfectly happy in obeying 
His commandments. But man disobeyed his 
Maker, and became lost in wickedness and misery. 
Yet his Creator had pity on him, and the Al- 
mighty Son of God even became man that He 
might redeem men from destruction, by enduring 
the punishment due to their sins." The people 
listened gravely and silently, and John Beck v 



132 MATTHEW STACH. 

with a glowing heart and a tongue loosed as it 
had never been before, told them at large how 
Jesus had suffered for mens salvation. Then 
taking up his book again, he read the account of 
our Lord's agony in the garden of Gethsemane. 
As soon as he had finished, one of the Green- 




JOHN BECK TEACHING- THE GEEENLAXDEBS. 



landers, named Kajarnak, stepped up to the table, 
and said with great earnestness, " How was that ? 
tell me that once more, for I would fain be 
saved too !" " These words/' says the missionary, 
u the like of which I had never heard from a 



LABOURS REWARDED. 



133 



Greenlander before, melted my heart, and made 
my eyes overflow with joyful tears, while I re- 
lated the history of the Saviour's life and death, 
and strove to explain to my hearers the way of 
salvation by faith in Him." His auditors were 
variously affected by this discourse. Some, in- 
deed, when their curiosity was satisfied, began to 
find the subject too serious for them, and slunk 
silently away, but many remained. Some laid 
their hands upon their mouths, according to the 
custom of the Greenlanders when struck with 
surprise, and several desired that the missionary 
would teach them what they should say to this 
great Lord and Saviour, and repeated the prayer 
they were taught, again and again, lest they 
should forget it. Meanwhile the other mission- 
aries had returned from their several employments 
out of doors, and saw, with delight and astonish- 
ment, a crowd of natives listening eagerly to the 
story of man's redemption. At taking leave, the 
Greenlanders said, 4 4 We shall soon visit you again 
to hear more of these things, and we shall tell our 
neighbours what you have been saying to us." 

Accordingly, a few days afterwards, some of the 
party returned, and were so much interested that 
they remained all night to hear more. Kajarnak, 
especially, had retained a lively recollection of 
the things which he had heard, and of the peti- 
tions which he had been instructed to offer to 
God ; and he declared that he often felt his heart 
inclined and, as it were, bidden to pray. All that 



134 



MATTHEW STACH. 



he heard from the missionaries he repeated to his 
tent companions, but took especial delight in 
teaching his wife and little son. After a short 
time he removed, and pitched his tent close to 
Xew Herrnhut, that he might be daily within 
reach of his instructors. 44 It is evident," write the 
missionaries at this time, 4 'that the Word of God 
has made a very deep impression on the mind of 
this man. \Yhile we explain to him the Scrip- 
tures, words of prayer rise to his lips, and he is 
often moved to tears. His quick apprehension 
and affectionate reception of the truth are as- 
tonishing, compared with the supine indifferent 
temper which characterizes the natives of this 
country generally. Kajarnak seems to devour the 
words which we utter, and the truth no sooner 
enters his ears than it finds a lodgment in his 
understanding and memory." The change which 
had passed over their countryman aroused the 
curiosity and interest of several other Green- 
landers, who also came and pitched their tents 
near the mission-house in order, as they said, to 
hear the joyful news of a Eedeemer ; and when 
the missionaries, addressing their native hearers, 
hesitated for want of suitable expressions, Ka- 
jarnak, out of the fulness of his heart, suggested 
appropriate words. ' 4 If we are teaching him to 
think," say the brethren, " he in return is teach- 
ing us to speak rightly concerning divine things. " 

In these new and happy occupations the summer 
wore on. The season of the reindeer hunt, which 



REIN-DEER HUNT. 



135 



was prosecuted with great vigour and success in 
the neighbourhood of Baal's Biver, was now come. 
A number of families usually united in the chase ; 
the women and children surrounding a district in 
which the reindeer were known to be plentiful, 
and gradually moving onwards till they closed 
round them, and drove the timid creatures into 
the narrow central space, where they were easily 
killed by the hunters. Another way was for the 
women to chase a number of reindeer into a 
narrow bay where the men had stationed them- 
selves in their kayaks, ready to dispatch them 
with bows and arrows. The labours of the day 
were frequently succeeded by a feast or dance in 
the evening ; and the hunt was in great favour 
among the Greenlanders, as an occasion both of 
profit and amusement. The missionaries were 
consequently more sorry than surprised, when 
most of the attentive listeners who had lately 
gathered round them took their leave to join in 
the chase, promising, however, to return to New 
Herrnhut, as soon as the hunting season was over. 
Kajarnak alone refused to go. He could not bear 
to deprive himself during some weeks of all re- 
ligious instruction, and he feared that when sur- 
rounded only by his heathen fellow-countrymen, 
he might become indifferent to the glad tidings 
he had so lately learnt to prize. This was too 
truly the case with his companions. They re- 
turned, indeed, to the mission station towards the 
beginning of winter, but the religious impressions 



136 



MATTHEW STACH. 



which had seemed so vivid, had faded from their 
minds, and after some weeks they finally left the 
neighbourhood. 

They did their utmost to persuade Kajarnak to 
depart with them, representing in strong terms 
the difficulties he would have to encounter, and 
contrasting the restraints imposed on him by his 
new associates and pursuits, with the wild un- 
bounded freedom of native life. Their arguments 
had no effect, for he had found a prize, for the sake 
of which he was willing to endure greater trials 
than any which his companions had suggested. 
By the desertion of his partners, Kajarnak was 
deprived of the large boat, tent, and other posses- 
sions in which he had an equal share with them- 
selves, and was reduced for a time to great straits ; 
but he bore the loss patiently. The missionaries 
discovered that this was the third time he had 
been thus impoverished, owing to his opposition 
to the evil practices of his comrades ; and they 
concluded from thence, that even before he had 
heard of a Saviour, the Holy Spirit had been pre- 
paring his heart for the kingdom of God. Besides 
Kajarnak and his wife, about twenty natives 
settled at New Herrnhut for the winter. They 
were assembled daily for prayer and catechising ; 
and on Sunday, a larger portion of time was 
devoted to these exercises, and to the reading and 
careful explanation of a portion of Scripture. By 
degrees, the brethren rendered into Greenlandic 
several portions of the Moravian liturgy. They 



NATIVES AT NEW HERRNHUT. 



137 



also translated some German hymns for the use of 
their catechumens, and found that the lessons of 
the Gospel expressed in verse, made a deeper im- 
pression on the minds of the natives than the same 
Divine truths conveyed in the form of prose. 

The number of their hearers was increased after 
Christmas, by the extreme severity of the weather. 
The excessive cold which marked the beginning 
of the year 1738 has been already noticed ; the 
frost which ushered in the year 1739 was not less 
severe. The surrounding seas were blocked up 
with ice. Fishing and seal-hunting were entirely 
suspended during several weeks. Many persons 
perished of hunger ; many of cold, because they 
could get no seal-oil to replenish the lamps which 
warmed their dwellings. Some fled to Godhaab, 
entreating the Danish colonists to relieve their 
distress, and from fifteen to twenty needy persons 
were sheltered and fed at New Herrnhut. The 
men of this company, finding their provisions 
exhausted while they were still far from the 
settlement, took their kayaks upon their heads, 
and travelled over the ice with all the speed they 
could make, to entreat succour for their wives and 
children. The brethren, accompanied by a party 
of boatmen from Godhaab, immediately set out 
s upon this charitable service; but tempestuous 
weather and the ice interposed so many obstacles 
to their progress, that a week elapsed before they 
could reach the poor creatures, who had been 
lying on the snow for the last ten days, and had 



138 



MATTHEW STACH. 



barely sustained life "by eating some of the old 
skins which covered them. 

Many times this winter, the missionaries were 
constrained to render hearty thanks to God for the 
change in their circumstances. But two years 
before, they had been suffering the utmost distress 
from hunger, accounting themselves happy if they 
could buy such bones and offal as even ,the Green- 
landers were ready to throw away. Now they had 
not only enough for their own wants, but daily fed 
a company of famishing persons from their table. 
They prayed and endeavoured that the souls of 
these poor people might be nourished. Several 
listened attentively when the Gospel was preached 
to them, and when spring returned, and most of 
the fugitives went back to their homes, one family 
chose rather to fix their abode near the mission- 
aries. All promised to settle, during the follow- 
ing winter, in the neighbourhood of New Herrn- 
hut, that they might be further instructed in the 
things of God. As soon as the weather would 
permit, Kajarnak and several of the catechumens 
went over to Kangek, and took up their abode there 
for a short time, in hope to capture seals. John 
Beck accompanied them, to watch over his own 
little flock, and also to proclaim the Gospel to the 
numerous heathen who dwelt there, and in the 
neighbouring islands. The seal-hunting proved 
very successful, but the party from New Herrnhut 
were eager to bring it to a close as soon as 
possible. The change which had passed on 



BARBARISM OF NATIVES. 



139 



Kajarnak, and in a less degree upon others, who 
had not made equal progress in religious know- 
ledge and experience, was very plainly seen, now 
that they were obliged daily to associate with the 
untaught heathen. The latter celebrated the 
success which crowned their labours with noisy 
feasts and dances, almost every night. For these 
revelries the catechumens had lost all taste, and 
when their daily work was ended, they withdrew 
quietly, finishing, and, if possible, beginning, every 
day with prayer, and a few words of exhortation 
from the missionary. John Beck found some 
opportunities of speaking with the heathen ; and 
from this time he and his brethren frequently 
visited the islands. 

They found that, by constant practice, they 
spoke and preached much more easily to them- 
selves, and more intelligibly to the natives, who 
often welcomed their visits, and at times displayed 
considerable emotion whilst listening to their 
discourse, but gave no evidence, at present, that 
the truth had found entrance into their hearts. On 
the other hand, the brethren were often shocked 
and distressed by the barbarous actions com- 
mitted amongst these people. The best and worst 
features of the native character were displayed in 
their parental and filial relations. In general, 
parents evinced great fondness for their children ; 
and the- children, when grown to maturity, treated 
their parents with gratitude and respect. But 
there were frightful exceptions ; and various 



140 



MATTHEW STACH. 



instances of a decrepit father or mother being 
buried alive, by their unnatural offspring, came to 
the knowledge of the missionaries. Whenever an 
opportunity of interference was afforded them, 
they endeavoured to prevent the commission of 
these atrocities. But Greenland was, in the 
strictest sense, a land without judges, and without 
laws ; and the barbarous sons and daughters who 
were capable of intending parricide, usually found 
means to carry their wicked design into effect, 
when no Europeans were near at hand. The 
journals and letters of the missionaries record the 
thankfulness with which they turned from these 
bitter fruits of the unrenewed heart, to mark the 
fear of sin, the gratitude to God, and goodwill to 
their neighbours, which appeared in the little 
flock under their care. Kajarnak was deeply con- 
cerned for his unbelieving countrymen, often 
entreating them no longer to remain in darkness, 
ignorant of their Maker, who had now sent His 
word to them. Sometimes, with irrepressible 
earnestness, he would pour forth a short fervent 
prayer that God would enlighten them by the 
knowledge of Himself. He had daily some fresh 
inquiries to make concerning the things contained 
in the Scriptures. One day, when speaking with 
his teachers, the conversation turned upon the 
conflict which every Christian has to wage with 
the sin of his own heart. " When an evil 
thought arises in my mind," said Kajarnak, 
" wherever I am, I raise my heart silently to 



BAPTISM OF KAJAKNAK AND FAMILY. 141 

Jesus, and ask Him to deliver me from it by His 
blood." 

The missionaries were extremely slow and 
cautious in administering baptism to their cate- 
chumens, knowing that all eyes would be on the 
new converts, and that the course of the Gospel 
would be grievously impeded, should the sub- 
sequent conduct of the baptized be inconsistent 
with their Christian profession. But they could 
no longer delay compliance with the request of 
Kajarnak, that he and his family might be in- 
corporated into the Church of the Eedeemer. On 
Easter- day, 1739, Kajarnak and his wife, who now 
received the names of Samuel and Anna, made a 
distinct confession of their faith in Christ, before 
a full congregation of Europeans and Greenlanders. 
Having declared that they utterly renounced all 
heathenish customs and superstitions, and were 
resolved, by the help of God, to live in obedience 
to His commands, they were baptized, with their 
two little children, by Matthew Stach. The 
words of the baptismal formulary, " I baptize thee 
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost, into the death of Jesus," made a 
deep impression upon the other catechumens, who 
expressed an earnest desire to share the privilege 
which had been bestowed upon their friends. 
Thoughts of gratitude, and joyful hope of blessings 
yet to come, cheered all hearts in the little com- 
munity at the mission settlement. But these pleas- 
ing anticipations were soon very sadly obscured. 



142 



MATTHEW STACH. 



It has been already observed that Greenland was 
a land without laws. But there was little fierce- 
ness or passion in the character of the natives, 
generally, and there would have been few out- 
breaks of violence and murder, had it not been 
for the blood-feuds which descended from father 
to son, sometimes through several generations. 
Occasionally a man slew his neighbour in a sudden 
fit of resentment, or even in deliberate malicious 
ill-will, but a blood-feud most commonly originated 
in a suspicion of witchcraft, when some man or 
woman was accused by the Angekoks (or sorcerers) 
of having caused the death of another by charms 
and conjurations. In anyol these cases, however, 
the relatives of the deceased person held them- 
selves bound to avenge his death. They usually 
watched for an opportunity of killing the slayer of 
their kinsman secretly ; and would nourish their 
design for years, if necessary, in order to make 
more sure of their revenge. Nor was it only the 
actual murderer whose life they sought ; his 
children, parents, kinsmen, even his neighbours, 
were sometimes sacrificed by the avengers of 
blood, and thus the tragedy was prolonged 
through a series of murders, persons who were 
entirely innocent frequently falling victims. 
Among the kindred of Kajarnak, who abode with 
him at New Herrnhut, was his wife's brother, 
Innungeitsok. Some years before this time, 
Innungeitsok had been accused by an Angekok of 
having conjured his son to death. The Angekok 



REVENGEFUL HABITS OF NATIVES. 143 

had, however, settled at a great distance in the 
north, and the accused man (who was perfectly 
innocent) had ceased to take any precaution 
against his malice. But the sorcerer, whose 
name was Kassiak, came this summer to Kangek, 
accompanied by several followers whom he had 
engaged to further his evil designs. Some of 
these men invited Innungeitsok, who suspected 
nothing, to go fishing with them, and when out at 
sea stabbed him with a harpoon. He drew it 
from his body, plunged into the water and swam 
to shore. But the murderers followed and over- 
took him, covered him with wounds, and threw 
him over a cliff, at the foot of which his corpse 
was found, by his sorrowing relatives, some days 
afterwards. The malice of Kassiak was not 
satiated by this murder. It became known that 
he threatened to take the life of Okkomiak, the 
brother of his victim, and also that of Kajarnak. 
The Danish colonists, however, exerted themselves 
to apprehend him, and he was captured with 
several of his gang. Kassiak confessed that he 
had committed three murders with his own hand, 
and had been an accomplice in four more. But as 
he was not amenable to any human tribunal, and 
was entirely ignorant of the Divine law, the 
Danes dismissed him again. Two of his followers, 
who had formerly resided at Godhaab, and had 
been instructed in the Word of God, they punished 
with flogging. The apprehensions of the threat- 
ened persons were rather increased than allayed 



144 



MATTHEW STACH. 



by these proceedings, which appeared to them 
more likely to irritate than to intimidate their 
adversaries. Okkomiak, especially, felt himself 
to be in great danger ; and Kajarnak sorrowfully 
came to the conclusion that he ought to reconduct 
his kinsman safely back to his own people in the 
south. The other members of their family were 
unwilling to be left behind, and in a short time 
but very few individuals remained of the little con- 
gregation on which the missionaries had looked 
with so much hope and satisfaction. 4 1 Our hearts," 
say they, 44 were very heavy; and the mission 
station, deserted by so many of its inhabitants, 
appeared suddenly to have become a desert." 

But ere long the solitude was enlivened by the 
arrival of twenty-one boats of southerners, who 
had met Kajarnak and his company on their way, 
and had (they said) heard from them such wonder- 
ful things concerning God, that they desired to be 
farther informed upon the subject. Towards the 
close of the summer, Simek, one of the fugitives, 
returned with all his household, and his arrival 
was followed by that of the Greenlanders who had 
been sheltered and fed during the dearth at the 
beginning of the year. A numerous native con- 
gregation was thus gathered, and abode at the 
mission station during the winter months. There 
was a general willingness to be taught, mingled 
with much levity. 44 At one time," say the 
missionaries, 44 our hearers are sleepy and indif- 
ferent, when we strive to instruct them from the 



RETURN OF KAJARNAK. 



145 



Scriptures ; at another, their attention is awake 
and lively, and they are eager to become pious all 
at once," The children afforded them the most 
satisfaction. Some of them learnt to read tolera- 
bly well in the course of the winter : they became 
much attached to their teachers, and when in the 
spring the parents quitted the mission settlement, 
to repair to the distant fisheries, the children car- 
ried with them the books which the missionaries 
had prepared and written out for their use, and 
which, besides easy reading lessons, contained 
short prayers, and rules of conduct suited to their 
age. 

Early in the summer of 17 40, Frederic Bcehnisch 
was married to Anna Stach. In the midst of the 
wedding festivities, to the joyful surprise of the 
mission family, their dear convert and friend, 
Kajarnak, made his appearance among them. He 
had been absent a year, and had made known to 
many of the Southland heathen the good tidings 
which he had received. At first, he said, they 
listened with wonder and pleasure, but when, after 
a while, they grew tired, and turned all to ridi- 
cule, he left them undisturbed. He had carefully 
endeavoured to instruct his own household, and 
had found in solitude access to his God and Saviour. 
But towards the end of his stay, an ardent longing 
for the instruction and society of his teachers took 
possession of his mind, and he was now come back, 
resolved never again to settle at a distance from 
them. It appeared, in the end, that Kajarnak's 

L 



146 



MATTHEW STACH. 



words and the silent eloquence of his blameless 
life had produced a far greater effect than he was 
aware of. Between three and four hundred per- 
sons eventually forsook their homes in the South, 
to place themselves under the instruction of the 
'missionaries, who attributed to the words and ex- 
ample of Kajarnak their first desire to be taught 
the way of salvation. But most of these came to 
New Herrnhut, after Kajarnak himself had been 
called to his rest. 

Shortly after his return to the mission settle- 
ment, the number of hearers and catechumens was 
increased by persons coming from the neighbouring 
islands, and also from places farther north. One 
of the new-comers was a young woman who had 
repeatedly begged that she might be taken into 
the service of the missionaries. ' But they, sup- 
posing her to be actuated rather by the desire of 
temporal benefit than that of religious instruction, 
had hitherto declined to comply with her request. 
Now, however, she came again, saying, with tears, 
that she could not bear to live among her heathen 
companions, who hated her because she would no 
longer conform to their customs. She was kindly 
received and cared for, until the brethren could 
find admission for her into the household of one of 
the Danish colonists, where, under the instruction 
of Mr. Drachart, the Danish minister at Godhaab, 
she made satisfactory progress in Christian attain- 
ments, and at the end of a few months was 
baptized. Two other young women, having them- 



A FEMALE CONVERT. 



147 



selves laid hold of the truth, took every oppor- 
tunity of recommending it to their neighbours. 
One of them was endowed with considerable natural 
ability, and proved a very useful assistant in the 
missionary work among her countrywomen. She 
was the only person amongst her own kindred and 
companions whose heart was opened, at once, to 
receive the Gospel. When the missionaries first 
visited these people, they perceived that, while 
all besides listened to their discourse with indif- 
ference or aversion, one daughter of the house had 
covered her face with her hands to conceal her 
tears, and heard her softly sob forth, " Oh, Lord ! 
Let thy light break through the very thick dark- 
ness." From that time she was wont to retire to 
solitary places among the rocks to pray. One of 
the brethren, who chanced to see her kneeling 
half hidden behind a cliff in a lonely spot on the 
shore, asked her why she knelt. ' ' Because," 
replied she, "I now begin to believe. I pray 
every day to God to be gracious unto me." Her 
petitions breathed the desires of a contrite heart. 
" Lord Jesus !" she was heard one day to say, 
" Thou knowest that my heart is thoroughly 
depraved. Make me truly sorry for it, take away 
the bad thoughts, and form me according to Thy 
pleasure. And as I yet know but little of Thy 
Word, give me Thy Holy Spirit to instruct me." 
Her constant care to avoid evil, and her value for 
the instructions of the missionaries, were resented 
by her relatives, who felt that her example was a 



148 



MATTHEW STACH. 



reproof to themselves, and they treated her with a 
degree of harshness, and even cruelty, which was 
of rare occurrence in a Greenland household. She 
escaped from them, at last, and found an asylum 
with Anna Kajarnak, at New Herrnhut. 

The missionaries now began to prepare her for 
baptism. Her joy at being made acquainted with 
the nature and design of that holy ordinance was 
very great. " Now," said she, "I believe that 
Jesus is the friend of sinners, not because you 
have told me so, but because I feel it in my own 
heart." She received at her baptism the name of 
Sarah, by which she is frequently mentioned in 
the journals of the mission, as visiting and ex- 
horting the heathen strangers who came into the 
neighbourhood. " Kajarnak and Sarah," say the 
brethren, " have rendered us material assistance 
in the translation of the 6 Harmony of the Four 
Gospels ' into Greenlandic, frequently directing 
us to the use of apt expressions which no gram- 
matical knowledge would have enabled us to 
discover." " The testimony of our baptized Green- 
landers," they add, " and especially of Kajarnak 
and Sarah, is producing a powerful effect upon 
their heathen fellow-countrymen, who cannot 
make the same objections to it which they have 
often done to ours ; saying, for instance, ' You are 
a different sort of people from us: these things 
may be very good for you, but we do not need 
them ;' or, ' We have no time to learn these 
things ; they are too high for us ; we must go a 



SEED ON GOOD GROUND. 



149 



fishing.' The heathen now see their own country- 
men and equals so changed that they may well 
be called new creatures, and hear them declare, 
freely and gladly, the praises of the Eedeemer, 
who hath called them from their former darkness 
into light." The migratory habits of the people 
caused the news to spread far and wide. A party 
who came from a considerable distance (it was 
supposed from the east side, as their dialect was 
not perfectly intelligible) listened with surprise 
and eagerness to the Gospel narrative. With 
most of them these things, new and strange as 
they accounted them, served only to gratify cu- 
riosity ; but there were two, an orphan brother 
and sister, in whose hearts the seed took deep 
root. Their change of sentiments and conduct so 
offended their neighbours, that when all were 
engaged in fishing at, a great distance from home, 
the rest of the company secretly rowed off and 
abandoned them. The two young people, thus 
deserted by their earthly kindred, sought and 
found a new home amongst their Christian coun- 
trymen at New Herrnhut. 

A party of Northlanders, also, whose curiosity 
was excited by the rumours which had reached 
them, pitched their tents close to New Herrnhut 
for a short time. They were above all astonished 
at the prayers of their converted countrymen, and 
inquired whether they also could be taught to 
speak such words. "0 yes," was the answer; 
" when you feel your great need of a Saviour, you 



150 



MATTHEW STACH. 



will not be able to help praying to Him to help 
you. Yon will be like hungry children, who 
naturally ask their parents for food." During the 
winter following his return to the mission-station, 
Kajarnak was particularly active in endeavouring 
to turn his countrymen from their evil ways. He 
began to visit the various winter settlements 
within reach, " to tell them," as he said, " some- 
thing of Jesus, the Eefuge of sinners." Being on 
a journey a short time before Christmas, several 
23ersons prayed him to remain a little while 
amongst them, and join in the feasts and re- 
joicings with which they were about to celebrate 
the yearly sun-feast. He replied, " I have another 
joy now, for a brighter sun has risen in my 
heart. I am hastening to my teachers to keep 
with them a great festival, in token that the 
Creator of all things was born into the world as a 
poor infant for our redemption." 

His useful course was soon arrested by death. 
In February, 1741, he was attacked with pleurisy, 
and after a few days of acute suffering fell asleep. 
He uttered no complaint; and seeing his wife 
and kindred weeping, he said to them, " Do not be 
grieved for me. Have you not heard that believers 
when they die go to our Saviour, and partake of 
His joy ? You know that He chose me first of our 
nation to know Him, and now He calls me first 
home to Himself. Only continue faithful to Him, 
and we shall all meet again before the throne of 
the Lamb." " All things," he said afterwards, 



DEATH AND BURIAL OF KAJARNAK. 151 

' ' which I heard in the days of rny health are 
much clearer to me now." The excellent character 
of Kajarnak had won him much respect from the 
European settlers ; and the two Danish ministers, 
factors, and other inhabitants of the colony joined 
the missionaries and his own people in attending 
his remains to the grave. Behind the station, at 
a little distance towards the north, the brethren 
had prepared a burial-ground as neatly as the 
rocky nature of the soil would permit. Here they 
laid the corpse of their beloved son in the faith, 
after one of the Danish missionaries had addressed 
the assembled people from the words, " I am the 
resurrection and the life," and told them that a 
i believer does not die, but at his departure out of 
this world begins truly to live. " We then," say 
the missionaries, " kneeled down on the snow 
under the open sky, and gave back to our Saviour 
this our firstling, with fervent thanks for the 
grace He had conferred upon him." 

The remembrance of the kinsman and friend 
who had thus happily departed produced a bene- 
ficial effect upon many of the survivors. His 
brother's wife was not of the number who profited 
by it ; and her death, which occurred soon after- 
wards, was marked by a very different spirit to 
the humble, tranquil confidence in which Kajarnak 
had committed his spirit into the hands of his 
Eedeemer. Her husband and, yet more, her chil- 
dren, had listened with much interest to the 
preach ing of the Gospel ; but the former could not 



152 



MATTHEW STACH. 



bring himself to give tip the roving life to which 
he had been accustomed. In one of his expedi- 
tions to the North, about a year after his wife's 
decease, he lost his life. His son Kuanak, a boy 
of ten or eleven years old, was much endeared to 
the missionaries by his ingenuous and affectionate 
disposition. He was obliged to attend his father 
in his journeying from place to place, but seldom 
missed any opportunity of visiting his teachers 
when they were within reach. He had a great 
fear of losing the things he had learned, and 
falling into the ways of the heathen. "I pray 
often to my Saviour," said the poor boy, " not to 
let me wander away from Him." And the prayer 
was answered, though he had much to suffer from 
the violent character of the man who undertook 
his guardianship after his father's death. He was 
able at last to return to New Herrnhut, but ar- 
rived there a cripple, owing to the ill usage he 
had undergone. His sister, who was a year or two 
older than himself, had been taken care of by the 
wives of the missionaries, and was one of the best 
pupils in their school. Several of Kajarnak's 
relatives now came from the south. They said 
that their kinsman had told them many things 
about one whom he called J esuna (J esus) ; things 
which they did not at that time understand ; but 
since then they had frequently thought upon them, 
and were now come to be more fully instructed. 
Nor were these empty words ; for not satisfied 
with attending the meetings of the congregation 



kajarnak's successor. 



153 



daily to hear the Scriptures explained, they often 
came singly to the missionaries to have their 
doubts and difficulties removed, and generally 
concluded with some such ejaculation as this : 
" Oh, that God would open my eyes, and purge 
my ears, that I might rightly understand this 
matter and be happy !" 

The children of Ippegau, who had, six years 
before, been the means of preserving the brethren 
from starvation, joined themselves to the believers ; 
and also a young man named Arbalik, whose ex- 
cellent capacity and warmth of heart, joined to the 
simplicity with which he received the Gospel, 
made the missionaries hope that he would be a 
worthy successor of Kajarnak. The event justi- 
fied their anticipation. Even befoie his baptism, 
the ready zeal of Arbalik rendered him a valuable 
helper to his teachers. While engaged in his 
daily labour he related to a woman, whom he met, 
the history of her of Samaria, and spoke of Christ's 
words, " If thou knewest the gift of God, and who 
it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou 
wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have 
given thee living water." The Holy Spirit was 
pleased to apply these words to the heart of the 
stranger, and like the woman of Samaria, but with 
a deeper meaning, she said, " Give me this water." 
A few weeks later the missionaries visited the 
island where she lived, and she came to them with 
eager desire to hear more. It seemed indeed that 
she could hardly be satisfied with hearing, for 



154 



MATTHEW STACH. 



after listening to their discourse the whole day, 
she sent her son to them at night, to pray that, as 
soon as they had taken needful rest and refresh- 
ment, they would come to her house and tell her 
more. Though unable to remove from the abode 
of her kindred, to live in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the missionaries, she proved a diligent and 
docile learner in the school of the Gospel. Her 
obedience to the truth exposed her at first to per- 
secution ; but she was enabled to persevere, never- 
theless, and recommended her new faith . by her 
consistent conduct. 

Matthew Stach, who had been absent on a visit 
to Europe, returned in the summer of 1742, bring- 
ing with him an assistant, who was to have the 
care of the children. He was rejoiced to find 
a numerous company of catechumens under the 
charge of his brethren. They were still exceed- 
ingly slow in admitting any to baptism. (Too 
slow, many of their friends in Europe thought. 
But some perhaps will think the long probation 
to which they subjected their catechumens suffi- 
ciently justified by the fact that, at the end of 
twenty- eight years, but two persons out of nearly 
a thousand baptized had relapsed into heathenism, 
and one of these shortly repented and returned.) 
The missionaries found that self-conceit was the 
weed which most frequently sprang up in the 
hearts of their people, and choked the seed of the 
"Word. Even Sarah was at one time ensnared by 
this intruder. Her successful diligence among 



BAPTISM AFTER PROBATION, 



155 



the heathen led her to entertain high thoughts of 
herself. Being reminded of the miserable condi- 
tion in which her Lord had found her and taken 
pity on her, and of the sense which, at that time, 
she had entertained of the evil of her heart, she 
burst into tears, and said, "Ah! now I plainly 
feel that I have gradually lost the happiness I 
used to enjoy. Something separates me from the 
Saviour. I pray, and yet do not find the way to 
Him." But from this time she was led to watch 
and pray especially against this besetting sin, and 
in the exercise of a lowly contrite spirit her former 
peace of mind was restored. 

At the same time with Arbalik, Matthew Stach 
baptized four other young people who had been 
for a considerable time under instruction. One 
of them was Issek, the sister of Sarah, whose 
mother, in her dying moments, had charged this 
daughter to follow the example of the elder 
sister whom they had persecuted, and join her- 
self to the Christians. Issek accordingly, after 
her mother's death, repaired to New Herrnhut, 
and prayed to be taught concerning the things she 
should believe. She received at her baptism the 
name of Judith, and, like her sister, proved an 
active helper in the instruction of her country- 
women. Arbalik, some months afterwards, was 
married to Sarah — the first couple whom the 
missionaries had united in Christian matrimony. 

At the beginning of the year 1743 there were 
symptoms of an universal awakening amongst the 



156 



MATTHEW STACH. 



Greenlanders on the shores and islands of Baal's 
Eiver. Many, indeed, who for a time listened 
with much interest to the preaching of the Gospel, 
could not resolve to live near the missionaries and 
receive the instruction necessary to prepare them 
for baptism, because this would have obliged them 
to give up the distant hunting-places to which 
they were accustomed to resort. And owing to 
this their first ardour gave way to comparative 
indifference. Yet of those who removed to a dis- 
tance, several came back in after years to New 
Herrnhut, others prosecuted their inquiries after 
truth in the various settlements erected by the 
Danes, and were there received into the Christian 
church. Some, too, who never joined the con- 
gregation of believers appeared by their lives to 
have yielded something more than a mere outward 
hearing and assent to the word preached by the 
missionaries. From this time the whole nation 
held foreigners in far higher esteem than before ; 
a change which was to be attributed chiefly to the 
impression left upon the wandering Greenlanders. 
The children participated in the general desire for 
instruction. One of the brethren, who was out 
with his gun in quest of rypen, found some little 
girls fishing at a hole in the ice. " Pray stay/' 
said they, " and teach us something. Cannot you 
leave your shooting for another day ? for we were 
so glad when we saw you coming. We cannot 
come to your house to be taught, and we want 
you to tell us something about Jesus, the Saviour." 



INCREASING SUCCESS. 



157 



By the people on the neighbouring islands, the 
visits of the missionaries were now always wel- 
comed. Hearing one day that a native Christian 
had been accidentally drowned at Kangek, one 
or two of the brethren immediately rowed thither, 
accompanied by some of their baptized Green- 
landers, to assist in interring the corpse. On 
arriving, they found that Arbalik had already has- 
tened to the place, and was speaking to an atten- 
tive company of listeners of faith in the Son of 
God, by whom life is imparted to the dead soul. 
" I, poor creature," he concluded, " have but little 
experience, but here are my teachers, who can tell 
you more." The missionaries accordingly ad- 
dressed the people on the subject of the Eedeemer's 
incarnation and death. All were moved, and 
said, "What strange thing is this? That which 
you say now affects us very differently from what 
you used to tell us about God and the two first 
parents. We continually said we believed it all, 
but we were tired of hearing it, and thought, 
What signifies this to us ? But now we find that 
there is something which interests us much." On 
this voyage, the brethren could not but thank and 
praise God who had so turned the hearts of the 
people, that those who had formerly despised and 
reviled them, now came to ask pardon ; and some 
who had most obstinately refused to listen to 
them stood by the shores as their boat passed by 
entreating them to land. On their return the cold 
was intense. Their boat was covered with so 



158 



MATTHEW STACH. 



thick a coat of ice that, although they were 
seven in number, they could scarcely row it, and' 
the spray which dashed over congealed so suddenly 
that it would have sunk thern had they not used 
unremitted exertion to bale it out. 

Amongst the heathen who had witnessed the 
interment was an Angekok, who, when the funeral 
was over, declared his intention to forsake the 
practice of his art. He had been brought to this 
resolution, he said, by a startling dream. He 
thought that a little child came to him out of 
heaven, and led him first to a place of extra- 
ordinary light and beauty, where his ears Were 
enchanted by the sound of many voices singing 
melodiously. From thence his infant guide con- 
ducted him to a place of darkness, where were a 
multitude of unhappy prisoners who could find no 
way of escape from their misery. " Here," said 
the child, " you also must dwell if you do not turn 
from evil ;' ? and at these words horror took posses- 
sion of his soul. But his conductor brought him 
forth again into the light to a company assembled 
at a feast, and the food which they ate made men 
cease from evil. All the guests sang and rejoiced, 
so that he too began to sing, but one awoke him, 
and it was a dream. The brethren were little 
disposed to lay much stress upon dreams ; but 
they knew that God is sometimes pleased to 
speak " in a dream .... when deep sleep falleth 
upon man, then He openeth the ears of men, and 
sealeth their instruction, that He may withdraw 



CONVERSION THROUGH A DREAM. 159 

man from his purpose, and hide pride from man." 
And several instances occurred among the natives 
of a soul halting between two opinions being 
finally determined, by a dream, to break off from 
evil and follow after instruction in the Gospel. 
Such was the effect in this case. The Angekok 
utterly renounced the practice of his art, in which 
he acknowledged that much had been mere fraud 
and imposture, but declared that there had also 
been an interference of some supernatural agency, 
which he now, indeed, abhorred, but was unable 
to describe. He received with docility the in- 
structions of the missionaries, and after a long 
period of probation was baptized. His course of 
life afterwards was quiet and blameless, but less 
marked by a thirst after increasing knowledge and 
enjoyment of Christian truth than that of many 
of his fellow-converts. And it was the opinion 
of the missionaries that those members of their 
flock who had been first led to embrace the truth 
by impressions acting upon the imagination rather 
than upon the heart, rarely attained to so much 
maturity in the Christian character as others. 

From the accounts given both by natives, and 
Europeans who had occasionally been present 
when the Angekoks were engaged (as they pre- 
tended) in intercourse with the world of spirits, 
it would appear that ventriloquism and various 
conjuring tricks were largely employed. But 
several of these men, who, in after years, joined 
the Christian church, stedfastly asserted that, be- 



160 



MATTHEW STACH. 



sides the deceits which they had practised, and 
of which they were now heartily ashamed, some 
agency, independent of themselves, had acted 
upon them, and assisted them to delude their 
disciples. It is certain that some amongst the 
Angekoks proved themseh es by their crimes to 
be the children of him who was a murderer from 
the beginning. Kassiak, who had caused the 
death of Innungeitsok, and had since then con- 
trived the murder of several other innocent per- 
sons, had for some time past taken up his abode 
in Kangek. Notwithstanding his infamous cha- 
racter, he was looked up to with superstitious 
awe by many of his countrymen. But in propor- 
tion as the truth made progress, his credit and 
his trade declined. He had more than once 
threatened that the missionaries, to whom he 
attributed the change in his fortunes, should not 
live much longer to injure him. One day in May, 
when all the men of the mission settlement, and 
all their teachers, excepting Matthew Stach, were 
absent hunting, Kassiak came to New Herrnhut, 
accompanied by so many of his followers that 
they quite filled the dwelling of the missionaries. 
Matthew knew w r hat they had threatened, but he 
felt no fear, and quietly pursued the occupation 
in which he was engaged. After sitting still for 
some time, Kassiak said, " Vre are come to hear 
something good." 64 I am glad of it," replied the 
missionary; and with a short prayer that God 
would open their hearts, he repeated a portion 



KASSIAK HUMBLED. 



161 



of St. Paul's discourse to the men of Athens. 
44 Now/' said he, 44 I need not say anything to 
prove that there is a Creator, for this you all 
know." To this they agreed, with the exception 
of one man. 44 You also know that you are 
wicked people." They unanimously assented. 
44 Now then, I come to the main point, that you 
and we have a Saviour, the same great Being who 
created all things in the beginning. He lived 
upwards of thirty years on earth to instruct and 
bless mankind, after which He was nailed to a 
cross, and slain by His countrymen, who would 
not believe His words. But on the third day He 
rose again from the grave, and afterwards ascended 
up into Heaven. The time is now approaching 
when He will come again in the clouds of heaven, 
and all the dead will rise and appear before Him, 
as the righteous Judge, to receive sentence, every 
one according to his works. But thou, poor 
man!" continued Matthew, turning to the Ange- 
kok, 44 how wilt thou stand aghast, when all the 
souls whom thou hast hurried out of the world 
shall say unto Him that sits upon the throne, 
4 This wicked wretch murdered us just as Thou 
hadst sent Thy messengers to publish to us the 
way of salvation !' What answer wilt thou then 
return ?" Kassiak was silent and downcast. Ob- 
serving that a tremor pervaded the whole com- 
pany, Matthew Stach proceeded : 44 Hearken to 
me ; I will put thee in a way to escape this tre- 
mendous judgment — but delay not, lest death 



162 



MATTHEW STACH. 



anticipate thee, for thou art old. Fall, then, at 
the feet of Jesus. Thou canst not see Hhn, yet 
He is everywhere. Tell Him that thou hast 
heard that He loves the human soul exceedingly, 
and rejects no one who cries to Him for grace. 
Pray Him to have mercy on thee, poor, miserable 
man, and wash out thy sins in His own blood." 
With seeming emotion the Angekok promised 
that he would do this. He remained with his 
company for some hours, in a thoughtful and 
silent mood, and gave ear to a few words spoken 
by Anna Kajarnak, whose brother they had mur- 
dered. Towards evening, they departed again to 
their place ; but from this time Kassiak's enmity 
towards the missionaries disappeared, and he had 
many subsequent interviews with them. Yet he 
never could resolve to seek God in earnest. His 
life was prolonged yet many years ; and he desired 
that his family might receive frequent visits from 
the Christian teachers to be instructed in the 
things which concerned their souls. He also re- 
paired frequently to New Herrnhut. " Kassiak," 
say the missionaries, " comes often to visit us, 
and listens to the Word of God with a wonder- 
fully devout mien ; but his conversion, alas ! 
goes no farther. When we pray him to set a 
good example to his children, for whose welfare 
he seems anxious, by turning with his whole 
heart to the Lord ; he replies, ' I am never 
without some inclination to do it, but my will is 
too weak.' " In the course of time his two sons 



OBDUEACY OF KASSIAK. 



163 



resolved to abandon the conjuring arts in which 
he had instructed them, and removed to the 
mission station, that they might profit more con- 
stantly by the teaching of the missionaries. Both 
of them were eventually baptized, and now, more 
earnestly than ever, the brethren besought Kassiak 
to embrace, before it was too late, the message of 
salvation. But he alwa} r s answered, " I am too 
old to learn, and have been too wicked a man to 
be converted. Let the young people join you 
that they may become wiser and better. If I 
could change, I would join your company, because 
I see that you yourselves do the things which 
you teach, but I am too old now. I must go on 
in my old way." 

The growing numbers of the people who came 
under their charge rendered their necessary dis- 
persion during the summer months a cause of 
increasing solicitude to the missionaries. As far 
as possible, they accompanied, or frequently 
visited, their scattered flock ; but it was not 
possible to provide for all, and everywhere, the 
regular instruction and opportunities of public 
worship, which they enjoyed while dwelling 
together at New Herrnhut, during the winter. 
And much the brethren feared that the weak 
might be turned out of the way, and that those 
even who were stronger in the Christian life 
might fall fro'm grace when surrounded by heathen 
associates, and placed in the way of many tempta- 
tions to evil. This fear had even withheld them 



164 



MATTHEW STACH. 



from affording to their converts one of the most 
essential requisites and privileges of a Christian 
congregation. Seven years had elapsed since the 
first Greenland converts had been admitted by 
baptism into the Church of Christ. Many of 
their nation had since then been added to the 
flock ; of whom some had already finished their 
course on earth, while of others the missionaries 
were able to say, "We rejoice and thank God 
for the transformation of a wild, heathenish set 
of people into a well-ordered family of Christians. 
Above all, we praise Him for the gifts of His 
grace manifest in the conduct of some of our 
baptized Greenlanders." Yet not one of these 
converts had hitherto been admitted by them to 
the Lord's Supper ! At length, however, the 
enduring character of the good work which had 
been wrought, was become too evident to allow r 
the missionaries longer to deprive their Green- 
land brethren and sisters of so great a blessing. 
Perhaps, too, we may say their own faith in the 
grace and faithfulness of God was stronger, so 
that they could more unreservedly trust in Him 
to sustain the spiritual life which He had im- 
parted. They began, therefore, carefully to pre- 
pare their more advanced converts for admission 
to the Holy Communion. The gratitude and joy 
of the native communicants were affecting. u O, 
how is it possible," said they, " that .our Saviour 
can love poor men so exceedingly !" 

From this time, the festivals of the Church were 



SERVICES ON CHURCH FESTIVALS. 165 

invested with new interest. The special services, 
by which the great events of the Gospel history 
were commemorated, proved the means of much 
edification to the Greenlanders. During the 
season of Lent, the humiliation, sufferings, and 
death of our Lord, formed the constant subjects 
of reading and illustration, but especially in 
Passion Week, when the missionaries strove to 
lead their people, step by step, through the last 
solemn scenes of their Kedeemer's life on earth. 
On Easter Eve, they were reminded that by His 
abode in the tomb the Son of God had sanctified 
the grave, and made this last house (otherwise 
so gloomy and frightful) a place of blessed rest 
for those who die in the Lord. On Easter Sun- 
day, the congregation assembled in the chapel 
before sunrise, and proceeding from thence to the 
burial-ground, they called to mind, by name, the 
brethren and sisters departed during the pre- 
ceding year ; and, in the words of their burial- 
service, prayed for " everlasting fellowship with 
them and the church triumphant around the 
throne of the Lamb." 

Hymns, chants, and anthems, which constitute 
a large portion of the public services of the 
Moravians, became a source of great delight to 
the Greenlanders. Almost every evening during 
the winter, several of the people assembled to 
repeat and practise, and those who could not read, 
learnt the words from the lips of their better- 
instructed companions. Some of the brethren 



166 



MATTHEW STACH. 



who, from time to time, came out from Germany 
to assist in the affairs of the mission, could play 




SINGING SCHOOL. 



on the flute, violin, or other instruments. Find- 
ing that several of the native youths had a good 
ear for music, and were capable of learning to 
play well enough to accompany the singing of the 
congregation, they formed amongst them a little 
band. The singing was remarkably pleasing ; 
the women and children possessing, in general, 
sweet voices, which melted into perfect harmony. 
In the morning, at eight o'clock, and also in the 
evening, when the men had returned from the 



THE CAPLIN FISHERY. 



1G7 



sea, service was held daily in the chapel, and at 
one or other of these times one of the missionaries 
explained a passage of Scripture, or delivered a 
short exhortation. On Sundays, a sermon was 
preached in the afternoon, and many of the 
neighbouring heathen frequently joined the con- 
gregation. A short, special service was held on 
Sunday, for the benefit of the children, who were 
too young to participate in the more protracted 
devotions of their elders, and they were daily 
assembled to be catechized. 

Before Whitsuntide, the congregation broke up 
for the summer, to repair to the fisheries. One 
or more of the missionaries usually accompanied 
them, and a few brief extracts from their journals 
will describe the kind of life led by the teachers 
and their people at these times. " On the 19th 
May," says John Beck, ' 1 1 set off for the Caplin 
Fishery with most of our people, in twenty-two 
large boats and a great number of kayaks. In 
two hours it began to snow so thickly that not 
one of us could see twenty paces before him, but 
the good angels guided us, and no one suffered 
harm or was separated from his company. We 
were able also to pitch our tents sufficiently near 
together, so that until the sealing party left us 
none were prevented by distance from joining in 
our daily worship. We all had an opportunity 
of learning by experience that the presence of the 
Lord is not confined to place ; and I endeavoured 
to impress upon the minds of the people the 



168 



MATTHEW STACH. 



assurance that trie grace of our Saviour is to be 
sought and found not only in the house of prayer, 
and in the solemnities of worship, but every- 
where. At sea, or on the icy mountains, or in 
the thickets, wherever a soul, sensible of its need, 
applies to Him for relief, there is the ear of the 
Lord open, and His arm stretched forth. 

During the sermon on Whitsunday, we had a 
numerous and attentive auditory, though the 
snow fell in great quantities upon us ; for the 
church at Pisiksarbik has no roof but the firma- 
ment, its walls are the snow-white mountains, the 
pulpit is a large stone, and a ledge of rock the 
substitute for benches. After the service, I gave 
the Greenlanders a dinner of reindeer's flesh. 
Two of them, who had been guilty of some mis- 
conduct recently, now appeared ashamed, but one 
was very shy of me, and I knew he had been asso- 
ciating with bad companions. I sought an oppor- 
tunity of conversing with him, and represented 
how grievous and dishonouring such conduct was 
to his heavenly Master. This appeared to move 
him much ; he wept, and I could not refrain from 
weeping with him." 

On the 28th, the tattarets* gave notice that the 
fish were approaching, and the first shoals of 
caplins came near the shore. All hands were 
soon busily engaged in catching them. " On the 

* The tattaret, a beautiful little bird with sky-blue plum- 
age, is a species of gull, which spends the winter in warmer 
countries, returning to Greenland early in the spring. It fol 
lows the shoals of caplins into the fiords. 



FISHERY PROSPEROUSLY COMPLETED. 169 

8th of June, a great many heathen came to us, 
and heard a sermon on John iii. 17—21. The 
same evening our sealing party came back with 
the melancholy intelligence that one of their 
number, young Bartholomew, was missing. I 
despatched several men immediately to search 
for him. After much labour they found the poor 
youth in a bog, quite dead. He had tried to 
carry his kayak across it, seemingly, but the 
treacherous soil giving way beneath his feet, he 
had sunk in and was suffocated. He came to us 
last year and was baptized, and we had derived 
much satisfaction from his good conduct. We 
laid him in a grave, and raised some stones for 
a monument on a lock near the spot. Four days 
afterwards, our fishery being prosperously com- 
pleted, with songs of praise we set out in fair 
weather for New Herrnhut." 

The last night of the year was a season marked 
by special prayer and thanksgiving, in which 
were remembered the remarkable occurrences of 
the past twelve months ; and few, if any, years 
passed in which some of the native Christians, 
and the brethren themselves, had not to give 
thanks for preservation in circumstances of great 
peril, or to own with submission the chastening 
hand which had removed from them one and 
another of their kindred and friends. Many 
instances of dangers and escapes at sea, when 
overtaken by sudden fogs, or inclosed amidst the 
floating ice fields, are recorded in the journals of 



170 



MATTHEW STACH. 



the mission; and also some perils of a less ordi- 
nary kind, of which the following may serve as 
an example. In the month of May, 1745, while 
everything w T as still frozen, and the ground covered 
with snow, the brethren were startled one morn- 
ing by a loud noise like the roar of a tempest. 
They had scarcely time to run out of the house 
before it was filled with water, which, for a 
moment, they supposed must proceed from a 
sudden thaw, melting the snow and causing the 
brook which watered the valley to overflow. 
But the frost was as hard as ever, and all around, 
without, continued solid as marble. In about an 
hour the water subsided, and they were able to 
re-enter their house. They then found that both 
there and in the storehouse the water had gushed out 
of the earth like a fountain. But they were never 
able to account for so strange a circumstance. 

The year 1747 was happily distinguished by 
the erection of a new and larger church. The 
brethren had already enlarged their former place 
of meeting as far as possible, and for some time 
past had been obliged, for want of room, to preach 
and baptize in the open air, or if the weather was 
extremely cold, to separate with their nock into 
two or three little congregations, assembling in 
different apartments. This uncomfortable state 
of things was remedied by the liberality of their 
friends in Holland, who sent out timber framed 
ready for erecting a building seventy feet long and 
thirty broad. It contained, besides the church, 



^MATTHEW VISITS EUROPE. 171 

some rooms for the missionaries ; and two wings 
on the north and south sides comprised school- 
rooms and storehouses. While the erection was 
in progress. Matthew Stach proceeded to Europe. 
The brethren there thought it advisable that the 
missionaries stationed in Greenland, should, from 
time to time, revisit their native climate, to recruit 
their strength, and rest awhile from the various 
labours incident to their situation. Accordingly, 
each of the Greenland missionaries had in turn 
paid a short visit to Germany. Matthew Stach 
was now repairing thither for the second time. 
He had been requested to bring with him some 
of the Christian Greenlanders, who had expressed 
a strong desire to see " the European land," and 
the friends who had cared for their souls, and 
sent teachers to show them the way of salvation. 

In compliance with this request, the missionary 
was accompanied by Arbalik and his wife Sarah, 
her sister, Judith Issek, Matthew, the son of 
KajarDak, a boy of fourteen, and another youth 
about the same age. The journey proved of great 
advantage to them. Their minds were enlarged 
by the introduction to civilized nations, to new 
modes of living, new forms of animal and vege- 
table life, while the simplicity of their religious 
feelings remained unimpaired. But two of the 
travellers did not live to return to their native 
land, and the journeyings of the others lasted 
much longer, and extended over a much larger 
portion of the world, than either they or their 



172 



MATTHEW STACH. * 



European friends had foreseen. They arrived in 
Europe towards the end of summer, and spent 
the autumn and winter in Holland and North 
Germany. Fearing that a longer continuance 
in a climate so unlike their own, and the de- 
privation of Greenland diet, might injure their 
health, the missionary proposed to return with 
them before the heats of summer commenced. 
Various obstacles, however, arose and prevented 
him from carrying this design into effect. In the 
meantime Sarah peacefully ended her life at 
Herrnhut, in May, and her husband Arbalik 
followed her, not many weeks afterwards, to 
the great grief of their teachers, who lost in 
them two very valuable assistants. Matthew 
Stach was now, more than ever, anxious to take 
the survivors safely back to their own country ; 
but no opportunity of doing so w T as afforded him 
until, towards the close of the year, the master 
of the ship Irene, just arrived at Amsterdam 
from New York, expressed his willingness to 
reconduct the whole party to Greenland. It 
was, however, by a most circuitous route, the 
ship being bound to London and Philadelphia 
before she could perform the Arctic voyage. 
They arrived in London in the beginning of 
1749. George II. being told that some Christian 
Greenlanders were in England, expressed a wish 
to see them, and they were accordingly presented 
to the king and the rest of the royal family at 
Leicester House. After remaining in port a short 



ACCOUNT OF TSCHOOPE'S CONVERSION. 173 

time, the Irene sailed again for Philadelphia, 
where the captain purposed remaining some 
weeks. During this time Matthew Stach and 
his companions visited the settlements formed 
by some of the Moravian brethren in Pennsyl- 
vania, and their missions amongst the American 
Indians in the backwoods. Much kind feeling 
and brotherly sympathy was elicited by the inter- 
course which took place between the American 
converts and their Greenland brethren. With 
the help of the missionaries to interpret between 
them, they interchanged accounts of the progress 
of the Gospel amongst their respective nations, 
and of their very different modes of life and 
occupation. The Indian first converted by the 
brethren was a Mohican, named Tschoope, a 
man who had been notorious for his evil and 
ferocious life, but who possessed much influence 
over his companions. The account he gave of 
his conversion deserves to be recorded. Having 
been frequently amongst the Dutch settlers, he 
understood their language, which induced the 
Moravian missionary, Christian Eauch, who could 
speak Dutch, to address himself to him in the 
first place. The effect produced by his discourse 
is best described in Tschoope's own words, when 
addressing the other missionaries who had come 
to visit him. " Brethren," said he, " 1 have been 
a heathen, and have grown old amongst them, 
therefore I know how the heathen think. Once, 
a preacher came and began to explain to us that 



174 



MATTHEW STACH. 



there was a God. We answered, 'Dost thou 
think us so ignorant as not to know that ? Ee- 
turn to the place from w T hence thou earnest.' 
Then another preacher came, and said, ^ You 
must not steal, nor lie, nor get drunk,' &c. We 
answered, ' Thou fool, dost thou think us ignorant 
of this ? First teach the people, to whom thcu 
belongest, to leave off these things. For who 
steal, lie, or are more drunken than thine own 
people?' And thus we dismissed him. After 
some time brother Eauch came to my hut, sat 
down, and spoke nearly as follows : ' I am come 
to you in the name of the Lord of heaven and 
earth. He sends to let you know that He will 
make you happy, and deliver you from the misery 
in w r hich you lie at present. For this end He 
became a man, gave his life a ransom, and shed 
His blood for sinners.' Something more he said 
concerning the preciousness of the blood which 
i^edeemed us ; then, being tired with his journey, 
he lay down, and slept soundly. I thought, what 
kind of man is this ? There he lies and sleeps ; I 
might kill him, and throw him into the wood, and 
who would regard it? But this gives him no 
concern. However, I could not forget his words. 
They constantly recurred to my mind. Even when 
asleep, I dreamt of the blood Jesus Christ shed for 
us. I found this to be entirely different from 
anything I had heard before, and I interpreted 
Ranch's words to the other Indians. Thus, through 
the grace of God, an awakening began among us. 



RETURN TO GREENLAND. 



175 



I say, therefore, brethren, speak of Christ our Savi- 
our, of his sufferings and death, if you would wish 
your words to gain entrance among the heathen." 

Letters, speaking the Christian friendly feeling 
of the waiters, were sent by these Indian converts 
to their Greenland brethren ; and the congregation 
at Bethlehem, hearing that they were often re- 
duced to straits for want of timber, sent them 
also a quantity of wood and shingles, sufficient 
to build storehouses in which all the dried fish, 
reindeer's flesh, &c., gathered by the labour of 
the summer, could be safely laid up for winter 
consumption. With this homely but valuable 
present, Matthew Stach and his companions took 
their leave, the Irene being now ready to depart. 
They arrived in Greenland late in the summer of 
1749, and were joyfully welcomed back to New 
Herrnhut. The Greenlanders were never tired of 
interrogating their travelled brethren concerning 
all that they had heard and seen in strange 
countries. The travellers had so well conformed 
to European dress and customs, that, during the 
latter portion of their journeyings, no one, until 
told who they were, suspected them to be natives 
of a heathen and uncivilized land. They now 
resumed without repugnance the laborious life of 
Greenlanders, with all its inevitable hardships ; 
but retained through the rest of their days the 
superior esteem of their countrymen, as persons 
wiser than their brethren. 

Judith was very desirous to promote among her 



176 



MATTHEW STACH. 



young countrywomen the order and decorum 
which characterized the Moravian sistere in 
Europe. Nor were the young people or their 
elders averse to co-operate in her plans. Ac- 
cordingly, she erected with their help a dwell- 
ing large enough to furnish accommodation for 
the unmarried young women of the settlement, 
and took them to live with her. By day each 
fulfilled her duties in the household to which 
she belonged, but returned in the evening to 
her companions. Judith was directed and as- 
sisted in her charge by the wives of the mis- 
sionaries, and though young herself, proved a 
kind and vigilant superintendent. She con- 
tinued to labour for the temporal and spiritual 
welfare of her countrywomen for ten years, after 
which a lingering illness brought her to the grave. 
Ever since their return to Greenland, the natives 
who had been in Europe had kept up a corre- 
spondence with their friends there. Some of their 
letters were preserved and inserted afterwards in 
the history of the mission. One, written by Judith 
in the very near prospect of death, breathes a 
spirit of patient submission, of humble assured 
faith, and joyful anticipation of life everlasting 
in the presence and service of her Eedeemer, 
which may be well described in the words of 
the Prophet, " Thou wilt keep him in perfect 
peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he 
trusteth in Thee." 

The missionaries found much to encourage them 



MISSIONAKY SCHOOLS. 



177 



in their schools. School was kept only during 
the winter; and but for half the day. For the 
girls were early inured by their mothers to the 
various labours which fell to the lot of a Green- 
land woman, and the boys, while still very young, 
began to practise rowing the kayak, darting the 
harpoon, &c. Much time was necessary to acquire 
proficiency in these exercises. Amongst the 
heathen Greenlanders, dexterity in their arduous 
occupations was reckoned the highest virtue, and 
nothing would have been more apt to deter them 
from giving ear to the Gospel, than an appearance 
of inactivity, negligence, or unskilfulness, in those 
of their countrymen who had embraced it. But 
short as was the portion of each day devoted to 
school, the children, in general, made good pro- 
gress. Many learnt to read well in the course of 
one winter ; and amongst the elder scholars, there 
were several who read and wrote both Greenlandic 
and German correctly. They were sedulously 
taught to regard their superior attainments as the 
means of benefiting others who had not enjoyed 
the same advantages ; and their teachers were 
pleased to see that they often employed their leisure 
hours in reading to the old people who had never 
learned. 

As a nation, the Greenlanders were, by na- 
ture, careless and improvident. The missionaries, 
therefore, constantly bent their efforts to form 
habits of economy and forethought in their 
people. " To mind diligently their own busi- 

N 



178 



MATTHEW STACH. 



ness and labour, that they might walk honestly 
toward all men, and might lack nothing. To 
labour, that they might have to give to him that 
needed. To waste nothing." These lessons were 
not only inculcated by the lips of the teachers, 
but taught by all the regulations which they in- 
troduced among the inhabitants of the mission 
settlement, and to which the latter willingly 
consented. For, it may be said here, even had 
the missionaries desired to impose any rules by 
constraint, the attempt would have been hateful 
to the Greenlanders, who were jealous of their 
liberty. But with their entire consent, such 
orderly methods of industry and prudent fru- 
gality were established among the Christian na- 
tives, that besides maintaining a number of help- 
less orphans, aged, and destitute persons, whom 
their heathen kindred had rejected, they had 
always a larger quantity of produce to dispose 
of to the Danish factors than the latter could 
procure elsewhere. " Indeed," says the old his- 
torian of the mission, " if any temporal advantage 
must be confessed to have an influence in inducing 
heathen Greenlanders to join the believers, it is 
the prevalence of honesty and good order in our 
congregation, where every one is sure of his 
property, friendless widows are relieved, none 
are obliged to marry against fcheir inclination, 
no wife is turned away, or husband permitted 
to marry more than one wife, and all fatherless 
children are maintained and educated." 



MISSION TO LABRADOR. 



179 



Cheered by the increase with which God had 
blessed the seed sown by himself and his brethren, 
Matthew Stach began to look with a longing eye 
towards the south-west. There, beyond the spread 
ing waters, an Esquimaux people, akin in race and 
language to his Greenland converts, wandered 
over the cold barren wastes of Labrador. To 
introduce the Gospel amongst them became now 
the desire of his heart. The account which the 
mariners, who had visited the coast of Labrador, 
gave of its inhabitants, was not of a character to 
invite men who were impelled by other motives 
than those of love to God and man. " Thieves and 
murderers," were the terms in which almost every 
one who spoke of these people, described their 
character. " But the more depraved they are by 
nature," said the missionary, " the more need is 
there that w r e should make known to them the 
way of salvation." His brethren in Europe cor 
dially entered into his views, and authorized him 
to proceed to England, in order to solicit per- 
mission from the Hudson's Bay Company to begin 
a mission in Labrador by preaching the Gospel to 
the natives belonging to their factories. His ap- 
plication, however, though seconded by persons of 
wealth and influence in London, proved unsuc- 
cessful. Some pious merchants who shared in the 
wish of the missionary to make known the Word 
of God in that country now devised another plan. 
They agreed to fit out a ship for trading on the 
coast of Labrador. Missionaries, it was thought, 



180 



MATTHEW STACH. 



might, by this means, visit the people and fomi 
an acquaintance with some of them, and, in the 
end, a mission station might be established. While 
Matthew Stach was waiting in England for this 
project to be carried into effect, the Moravian 
brethren in Germany deputed one of their bishops, 
Johannes de Watteville, to visit the Greenland 
congregation. De TVatteville, who had just re- 
turned from visiting and inspecting the missions 
in North America and the West Indies, willingly 
undertook this new commission, but desired for 
his companion Matthew Stach ; and the latter, 
foreseeing that some time must elapse before 
anything could be done in Labrador, gladly re- 
turned meanwhile to his flock in Greenland. 

The voyage occupied six weeks. After having 
been hemmed in by ice-fields during many days, 
they discerned, on the 12th June, the snow- 
clad tops of the Greenland mountains, being then 
about twenty leagues distant from the shore. 
Presently afterwards, the voyagers were gratified 
by the appearance of one of the phenomena of 
polar skies, three parhelia, or mock suns, encircled 
by six luminous halos. " The following day," 
says Bishop TVatteville, " we entered Baal's Eiver, 
and were met near the outermost island by two of 
our Greenlanders, but the wind being too high for 
them to get on board, they kept before us swim- 
ming through the waves on their kayaks like 
waterfowl, and with such velocity as to be always 
ahead of the ship, though they were often half 



BISHOP WATTEYILLE'S VISIT. 



181 



buried under water. The wind rapidly increased 
to a hard gale, and we flew past island after island 
like an arrow. At length New Herrnhut came in 
sight, moving my heart with joy and gratitude. 
It stood like a garden of the Lord amidst the 
wilderness. All around were bare rocks thinly 
interspersed with sand, but the land adjacent to 
the church and dwelling of the missionaries was 
clad with verdure most refreshing and grateful to 
the eye. In front of the church, the brethren had 
laid out a garden, in which they pleased them- 
selves with raising such salads and other vege- 
tables as could be reared in a climate where the 
ground was frozen during nine months in the 
year. On either side were the huts of the Green- 
landers, built on the rocks ascending from the 
shore. Scurvy-grass, mountain sorrel, and other 
indigenous plants, grew in the greatest abundance 
round the buildings ; and the plain between the 
little village and the beach was carpeted with 
grass, and dotted over with the summer tents of 
the people. A large magazine, standing alone 
on a height, served as a beacon to ships approach 
ing the shore. 

The bishop soon made himself acquainted with 
all the inhabitants of the settlement, visiting the 
various stations to which they had dispersed for 
fishing; and with the help of one of the mis- 
sionaries to interpret, instructing them all both 
publicly and privately, he entirely won the 
esteem of the Greenlanders. They were accus- 



182 MATTHEW STACH. 

tomed to distinguish persons oy some epithet 
descriptive of their bodily or mental qualities, 
and he was long remembered among them as 
Johannes Assersok, i. e., the loving. He joined his 
missionary brethren in all their labours; and 
records, with pleasure, some of the expeditions 
in which he accompanied them to collect drift- 
wood, and turf, or the eggs of the eider-fowl, 
which formed an important part of their sus.- 
tenance during the summer months. One of 
these voyages was to Kanneisut, about ten miles 
distant on the other side of Baal's Eiver ; a tract 
of land broken with high rocky hills, interspersed 
with thickets and plots of grass, and watered by 
many streams and pools of clear water. This was 
a great resort of reindeer ; but it was yet more 
valuable for the abundance of trout which might 
be caught in the brooks, several hundred being 
sometimes taken at one haul of the net. The 
banks of the water, however, and the thickets, 
were infested with swarms of mosquitoes. They 
were not, the bishop assured his companions, 
nearly so tormenting as those which abounded 
on the banks of the Delaware, or in the island of 
St. Thomas, whence he had lately come. The 
interest and sympathy of the native Christians 
were strongly excited by Bishop Watteville's ac- 
count of the American brethren, who had shown 
them so much goodwill a few years before ; and 
by his recital of the sufferings and difficulties 
which harassed the converted negro-slaves of St. 



NATIVE INSTRUCTORS. 



183 



Thomas. 44 flow happy we are," exclaimed they, 
" in being free to serve God every day in peace !" 

One of the subjects concerning which the 
brethren most desired to take counsel with the 
bishop, was the establishment of a mission- 
station in South Greenland, the most populous 
part of the country, and that from which most 
of their converts had originally come. These 
people were ardently desirous that the Gospel 
should be preached in their native district, and 
the missionaries longed to lay the foundation 
of another Christian settlement in the midst 
of the heathen. There appeared at present no 
prospect of their being able to do this, the means 
of the Moravian brethren being already tasked 
to the utmost to maintain the numerous missions 
they had planted during the last twenty years. 
Bishop Watteville could only join his hopes 
and prayers to their own, in regard to this more 
distant sphere of labour, but he visited with 
them various heathen settlements within reach of 
New Herrnhut. By his advice, the missionaries 
began to prepare some of their converts for more 
extensive usefulness, committing to them the 
duty of instructing their fellow-believers in the 
Word of God, during the absence of the people 
at their hunting and fishing-places. Matthew 
Kajarnak, Johanan, his friend and fellow-traveller 
in the visit to Europe, and several older brethren, 
whose exemplary conduct and progress in religi- 
ous knowledge entitled them to confidence, were 



184 



MATTHEW STACH. 



formed into a company of " National Assistants." 
Each had a certain number of families placed 
more particularly under his charge, to watch 
over them and catechise the children. In the 
absence of the missionaries, the National Assist- 
ants presided over the daily assemblies for 
worship, led the prayers of the people, and 
read and explained the Scriptures. They were 
also called upon to preach from time to time, 
in the mission- church. For all these duties 
they were carefully instructed by the mission- 
aries, to whom they rendered account of their 
proceedings every week. They were encouraged 
also to publish the Gospel to the heathen wher- 
ever they found opportunity. One or two speci- 
mens of their discourses may be quoted here, 
Having spoken to a company of heathens of 
the Son of God who had died for fallen man, 
the teacher continued very earnestly, "So dead 
and stupid as you now are, I, too, was formerly ; 
but when I heard that there was a Saviour who 
has purchased life for poor miserable men, I 
rejoiced at the good news, and prayed to Him 
to give me open ears and an open heart to hear 
and understand. And now you may easily see 
that I am happy, and I can wish you nothing 
better than that you also may submit to be made 
happy." Another assistant said, "It is with 
us, as when a thick mist covers the land, which 
hinders us from seeing and knowing any object 
distinctly. But when the fog disperses, we get 



THE "NATIONAL ASSISTANTS." 185 



sight of one corner of the land after another ; 
and when the sun breaks forth, we see every- 
thing clear and bright. Thus it is with our 
hearts. While we remain at a distance from 
our Saviour, we are dark, and ignorant of our- 
selves ; but the nearer approaches we make to 
Him the more light we obtain in our hearts, and 
thus we rightly learn to discover all good in Him 
and all evil in ourselves." 

That not only the foreigners — whom they 
regarded as different people from themselves — 
but their own countrymen, should speak of an 
invisible, almighty Saviour, Intercessor, and 
Friend, with the tone of men who Mew Him in 
whom they believed, made a powerful impression 
upon many. 84 Hast thou seen the God of whom 
thou speakest ?" said a heathen man to one of the 
brethren. He replied, " I have not seen Him 
yet, but I love Him with my whole heart, and I 
and all true believers shall one day see Him 
with our bodily eyes." The inquirer went away 
thoughtfully, and pondered the answer he had re- 
ceived. Afterwards he came to New Herrnhut, 
and prayed to be admitted into the number of 
catechumens. After receiving suitable instruc- 
tion, he was baptized, and led a life consistent 
with his Christian profession. The cheerfulness 
of his piety was remarkable, and his example 
was the more valuable, because he was the head 
of a numerous family, and a man much esteemed 
among his countrymen for sense and uprightness. 



186 



MATTHEW STACH. 



Within a short time after the appointment 
of the National Assistants, a fatal sickness broke 
out in the neighbourhood of the settlement. 
Thirty of the native Christians, amongst whom 
were some of the brethren so recently selected to 
serve as helpers, died, and also many of the 
heathen dwelling on the islands. Above all, the 
missionaries were grieved at the loss of Matthew 
Kajarnak, beloved for his father's sake and his 
own. " His activity and sound judgment," they 
write, " made him a very valuable fellow-labourer. 
We rejoice indeed with him that he is at rest, but 
his name will never be mentioned among us 
without exciting a feeling of affectionate regret." 
His end, like his father's, was full of peace, 
though attended with much bodily suffering. 
The breaches which death had made in the con- 
gregation were much more than filled up in the 
succeeding twelve months. Amongst those who 
now joined themselves to the believers, was a 
man named Kainaek, a wealthy Southlander, 
of a family esteemed noble in Greenland, since 
during three generations the men had been re- 
nowned seal-catchers. But Kainaek was even 
more conspicuous for his unbridled violence of 
character, than for his skill and wealth. He 
had been long acquainted with the missionaries, 
but his feelings towards them in former years 
had been anything but friendly. A young 
woman whom he sought in marriage was so 
terrified by his furious temper, that she fled 



BAPTISM OF KAINAEK 



187 



from her own friends to the mission settlement, 
entreating the white people to protect her. The 
missionaries pitied her distress, and gave her 
an asylum, which so incensed Kainaek, that 
he attempted to take the lives of some of the 
native Christians- In this evil design he was 
frustrated ; but he found an opportunity, after 
some time had elapsed, of carrying off his in- 
tended bride. His union with her proved the 
means of his conversion. During her abode at 
New Herrnhut she had heard something of the 
Word of God. She desired to hear more, and 
she acquired sufficient influence over Kainaek 
to make him a frequent listener to the discourses 
of the missionaries. But it was long before he 
could bring himself to embrace the humbling 
doctrine which they preached. Eestless and 
unhappy, he wandered from south to north, and 
from north to south again, but could not fly 
from himself. At last, one terrible winter's day, 
the inhabitants of New Herrnhut were rejoiced by 
the arrival of Kainaek and his whole family. 
The travellers were covered with ice as with 
a coat of mail, but the fire was kindled within, 
and they had come with humble minds, earnestly 
desiring to be taught and baptized into the 
obedience of Christ. 

Kainaek became as remarkable after his baptism 
for his quiet humble course of life, as he had 
been formerly for unrestrained vehemence. He 
had occupied so conspicuous a place among his 



188 



MATTHEW STACH. 



countrymen, that his conversion awakened atten- 
tion and curiosity in many who had as yet heard 
little or nothing of the Gospel. And now, for 
some months, there were few weeks or even days 
in which strangers did not visit New Herrnhut, 
to inquire what these new things were ? The 
interest with which some of the new-comers 
listened to the Word of God excited lively joy 
and hope in the breasts of their Christian coun- 
trymen. One of the national assistants, Daniel 
Agusina, became inspired with an ardent desire 
to visit his kindred and former acquaintances, 
who were living three hundred miles to the 
northward, that he might declare to them the 
things he had learned. 

The missionaries feared the temptations to 
which he would be exposed when surrounded 
by the heathen, and deprived of public worship 
and pastoral instruction. But seeing that his 
heart was set upon going they gave their consent 
and provided him with a companion, one of 
his fellow-assistants, named Jonas, who also had 
kindred in the north. The two travellers set 
out, full of hope, and turned their voyage into 
a missionary excursion, by making known the 
tidings of a Eedeemer wherever they could find 
hearers. In some places they were much ridi- 
culed and reviled; in others, they met with 
attentive listeners ; and at the end of two months 
they returned with grateful hearts, accompanied 
by several of their kindred. Daniel had per- 



DANIEL AGUSINA. 



189 



suaded all the surviving members of his family to 
come with him to New Herrnhut, and eventually 
all were converted to the faith. He possessed no 
ordinary qualifications as a teacher; and of all 
the national assistants he appears to have been 
the one who possessed most influence, and whose 
labours were the most blessed. By birth he 
was a Southlander, the son of a rich and prudent 
man, who led, according to the custom of the 
country, a roving life, residing one year in the 
south, another at Kangek, a third at Disko, &c. 
Agusina was the oldest of a numerous family, 
and was born about the time that Egede, the 
father of Greenland missions, landed in the 
country ; but he had grown to manhood before 
the tidings of a Saviour reached his ears. His 
father being at that time in Kangek, was visited 
by Mr. Drachart, the Danish minister at God- 
haab, who preached the Gospel to him and his 
family. Agusina was so impressed by what he 
heard that day, that he determined at once to 
become the property of the Saviour who had 
redeemed him. But he could not at this time 
join himself to the believers, as he desired to 
do. His father required his services, and Agu- 
sina was obliged to accompany him through 
a long course of wanderings. At length the 
family came again to Kangek, and Agusina, 
who was now a. married man, with children of 
his own, claimed his right to act independently. 
His brothers had grown up, and were able to 



190 



MATTHEW STACH. 



take his place in assisting their father ; he now, 
therefore, bade adieu to his kindred, and removed 
to Godhaab to place himself under the instruction 
of M. Drachart, by whom, in the year 1747, he 
was admitted into the Church, receiving at his 
baptism the name of Daniel. But one of his 
uncles having settled at New Herrnhut, and 
become a Christian, Daniel became very desirous 
to join him, and with the willing consent of 
Mr. Drachart, and the permission of the Moravian 
missionaries, he placed himself under the pas- 
toral care of the latter. He was soon afterwards 
admitted to the Holy Communion, and from 
that time became ardently desirous to publish 
to his countrymen the good news which he had 
himself received. Having been received into 
the company of assistants about the year 1753, he 
gave himself with all his might to the work. 
" Out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth 
overflowed, early and late," write the missionaries. 
Sometimes his heathen countrymen received his 
words with mockery, but more often they mani- 
fested a particular esteem for him, and veneration 
for his words. For he showed discretion as 
well as zeal in his efforts to instruct them. 
When addressing men who had never heard 
the Word of God, he would enter into friendly 
discourse with them, interest himself in their 
affairs, and by degrees, giving a different turn to 
the conversation, w^ould draw forth the thoughts 
they had concerning a Creator, and a future 



ZEAL AND PIETY OF AUGTTSINA. 191 

state. In this manner he often led them to 
acknowledge that man was by nature prone to 
evil, and could not find favour in the eyes of 
a perfectly pure and righteous Lord. Then with 
a burning heart, and often with tears in his eyes, 
he used to speak to them of Jesus. " What 
happiness it was," said he, looking back on his 
death-bed to these seasons, — " what joy it was 
to lead my countrymen to the Saviour, and to 
see them as happy as He, through mercy, has 
made me !" He was much respected by the 
Danish colonists and factors, who commonly 
spoke of him as " the man of God." Sometimes, 
during the busy season of the trade and fisheries, 
Daniel was obliged by necessary business to 
remain for a day or two at some station, where, 
excepting the factor and his boat's crew, all 
around him were heathens. At these times, the 
Greenlanders generally asked him to discourse 
to them, when their day's work was over, and 
he never refused. " But, " said the factors, 
relating these things afterwards to the mission- 
aries, " without any hesitation because of the 
presence of Europeans, Daniel used to uncover his 
head, fold his hands reverently together, and, 
after first praying, would speak to the heathen in 
so earnest ano 1 affecting a manner, that they were 
often moved to tears, and used to remain together 
conversing about what they had heard till a 
late hour of the night. Daniel spoke much in 
similitudes, knowing that this mode of teaching 



192 



MATTHEW STACH. 



was most acceptable to his countrymen. In 
winter, when he had much leisure, he would place 
himself in his kayak, and go to visit heathen 
villages inaccessible to the boat of the missionaries. 
Of a lively intrepid spirit, he was not to be 
deterred by danger, especially if he knew that 
any soul had been awakened to desire instruction, 
In all these labours he appeared to be guided by 
a spirit of unaffected humility. " In all places," 
said he one day to the missionaries, "I pray to 
the Saviour to lead and direct me ; for I know that 
I am a poor and wretched man if He is not con- 
tinually near me. My faults and infirmities are 
numberless, but my Lord knows them all, for He 
knows my heart, and therefore, I at all times address 
Him as a sinner. But the Holy Spirit directs my 
heart to the sufferings of Jesus, and I feel that He 
loves me who always chooses the poorest of men." 
But after persevering in his course of humble zea- 
lous diligence for several years, Daniel said, per- 
haps, in his heart, " I shall never be moved," and 
too soon had occasion to say " My feet were almost 
gone, my footsteps had wellnigh slipped." " By 
3, trivial circumstance," write the missionaries, 
" the door was opened for self-complacency at the 
great and excellent gifts which Daniel really 
possessed, though he had always appeared un- 
conscious of them ; and we could not but perceive 
that his love for Christ and souls had lost some- 
thing of its former earnestness and simplicity, 
and that his discourses no longer went home, as 



DEATH OF AGUSINA. 



193 



heretofore, to the hearts of the hearers." The 
Master, whom, notwithstanding all infirmities and 
defects, he sincerely served, did not permit him to 
continue in this state of spiritual declension. He 
brought him back by trial. His only daughter, 
Beata, a very dutiful and promising child of 
fifteen, died after a few days' illness, to the 
extreme grief of her father, whose dearly beloved 
companion and helper she had been. His distress 
in mind was at first so great, that he withdrew 
from participation in those ordinances of divine 
worship which had been his greatest joy. But 
after a few weeks the agitation of his spirit was 
calmed. He recognized the justice and mercy of 
God's dealings with him, humbled himself beneath 
the chastening hand of his Heavenly Father, and 
found peace. "For His anger endureth but a 
moment : in His favour is life." 

Yery soon afterwards, Daniel was seized with 
mortal sickness. But the prospect of death no 
more distressed him ; and when the disease left 
his mind clear, almost all his words were of 
grateful praise. " That my Lord hath chosen me 
from among the heathen — that He has washed me 
from my sins — that he has given me His body to 
eat, and His blood to drink ; and has kept me in 
fellowship with Himself, even until now — oh, 
how will I thank and praise Him !" 

In bringing to a close the history of Daniel 
Agusina, we have passed over a period of nine or ten 
years, during which the work of the missionaries 





194 



MATTHEW STACH. 



continued on the whole to prosper, though not 
without many disappointments — some of which 
arose from the death of native converts who had 
proved themselves faithful brothers and sisters in 
Christ, and some from the speedy effacing of reli- 
gious impressions in hearts which had appeared 
to be touched by Divine grace. " I know not 
how it is," said a woman : 44 we always will be con- 
verted, yet nothing comes of it ; we still prefer 
other things before our Saviour." Like the men 
who refused to come to the marriage feast, the 
Greenlanders had many excuses for declining to 
give heed to the Gospel. " I would gladly come 
to this Saviour," said one young man, " but my 
relations always keep me back." Another had 
bought a great deal of powder and shot, " which," 
said he, " I must first use up in the South, where 
there are many reindeer." Some men who would 
fain have settled within reach of the missionaries, 
were hindered by their wives, who could not bear 
to give up the feasts and merry-makings they had 
been used to share with their neighbours. One of 
these women came afterwards in great sorrow to 
the brethren. Her husband, she said, had lately 
died, praying earnestly for the pardon of his sins, 
and had entreated, as a last favour, that his corpse 
might be carried to Kew Herrnhut, and buried 
near the Christians, with whom he had desired to 
live. She bitterly lamented now that she had 
opposed his wishes, and prayed that the mission- 
aries would take her into the number of their 



a daughter's successful appeal. 195 

catechumens. In general, the young people re- 
ceived the word with most readiness, and were 
often the means of drawing their parents to join 
the believers. A man, to whom the brethren had 
often spoken in their missionary excursions, but 
who could not resolve to leave his native place to 
obtain more full and regular Christian instruction, 
accidentally met his daughter at the caplin fishery. 
She had removed from home some time before, 
and had become a Christian. He angrily re- 
proached her with separating herself from her 
father and kindred, and taking up with new 
friends ; but she met his reproaches by modestly 
stating the reasons which had induced her to take 
this step ; and having spoken of the peace which 
was obtained by obeying the Word of God, she 
said, " You too, my father, may share in this hap- 
piness ; but if you will not, I cannot stay and 
perish with you." These simple words appeased 
his wrath, and softened his heart. And not long 
afterwards he repaired to New Herrnhut, bring- 
ing with him his two sons, and the rest of his 
family. " 1 wish that my children may be bap- 
tized," he said to the missionaries, " for they are 
young, and they desire to belong to Jesus. As 
for myself, I dare not think of such a favour, 
being very bad, and old too. Yet I will live and 
die amongst you, for it refreshes my heart to hear 
of the Saviour." 

But there were also several cases in which the 
parents could not be persuaded, and either en- 



196 



MATTHEW STACH. 



deavoured by force to carry away their children 
from the mission settlement, or angrily renounced 
all further intercourse with them. 

Some of the years now under review were dis- 
tinguished by seasons of excessive cold and 
scarcity. In 1757, all navigation being stopped 
for some months by the ice, a famine prevailed, 
accompanied by the usual shocking consequences 
among the heathen, of old, helpless persons being 
buried alive, and very many persons perishing of 
hunger, especially orphan children. The brethren 
had always many applicants for relief in times of 
dearth, and nothing tended more to recommend 
the Gospel to the hearts and consciences of the 
heathen than the generous kindness they met 
with from their converted fellow-countrymen. By 
their newly-formed habits of forethought and 
prudent economy, the Christian Greenlanders 
were prepared for such seasons of distress, and 
they were the more frugal in supplying their own 
needs, that they might spare some of their stores 
to the destitute, hungry crowds who daily nocked 
to the settlement. 44 It is very good to be here," 
said one of the heathen, 44 because the people love 
one another so much." Nor was the compas- 
sionate liberality of the converts confined to their 
own countrymen. Nothing ever touched them 
more deeply than the account of the destruction 
which had fallen upon some of the mission set- 
tlements in America. When they heard that a 
party of savages had suddenly attacked one of the 



RETURNS TO GERMANY. 



197 



stations, murdering and burning, according to 
their cruel customs, and that the poor Indian 
Christians who had escaped with their lives had 
lost their all, the whole congregation burst into 
loud weeping. " I have a fine reindeer skin to 
give them," said one ; " And I have a new pair of 
boots," cried another ; " And I have some oil," 
said a third, &c, &c. All contributed according 
to their ability, and the money procured by the 
sale of their gifts was duly forwarded to the poor 
refugees in Pennsylvania. 

The thoughts of Matthew Stach were still bent 
towards Labrador on the one hand, and on the 
other to the establishment of a mission in South 
Greenland. The poverty of the Moravian com- 
munity threw, indeed, many difficulties in the 
way of any new undertaking ; but in faith and 
prayer they had encountered many difficulties, 
and overcome them, and their long-tried mission- 
ary had a good hope that in this case also the way 
would be made plain before them. The mission 
at New Herrnhut was well supplied with labour- 
ers, additional missionaries having come out from 
Europe ; and his early companions, John Beck and 
Frederic Boehnisch, carrying on the work with 
undiminished zeal, and an activity very little 
impaired by years. It appeared to Matthew 
Stach that the time was come when he might law- 
fully hold himself in readiness for service in 
another field ; and at the end of twenty-one years' 
labour in Greenland, he returned to Germany to 



198 



MATTIIEW STACH. 



place himself at the disposal of his brethren. 
Shortly before his departure, the Danes had 
founded another trading settlement in Fisher's 
Bay, a narrow fiord about thirty- six leagues south- 
ward of Godhaab. Near the mouth of the bay are 
two islands, from twelve to sixteen miles in cir- 
cumference, on the southernmost of which the 
Danes had established their factory. It so hap- 
pened that Matthew Stach was obliged to take 
shipping for Europe at this new settlement. Be- 
fore embarking, he took a view of the surrounding 
country, amongst the inhabitants of which were 
many families who had occasionally spent the sum- 
mer fishing season near Xew Herrnhut, and had 
become acquainted with the missionary. They 
prayed him that teachers might be settled in their 
district also, and he undertook to convey their 
request to his brethren in Europe. Accordingly, 
on arriving in Germany he laid the matter before 
the congregation at Herrnhut, and application 
was made to the Danish government for permis- 
sion to found the proposed mission. It was 
promptly granted ; but the Moravian Brethren 
were not able to avail themselves of it until two 
or three years had elapsed, during which the 
inhabitants of the Fisher's Fiord still urged their 
request for teachers as often as any of them visited 
the missionaries. In the year 1757, however, it was 
determined that Matthew Stach should undertake 
this new mission, planting a little Christian settle- 
ment at once, on the plan of that at New Herrn- 



FOUNDERS OF THE NEW SETTLEMENT. 199 

hut, with the help of some of the native families 
from that place. Amongst the brethren in Ger- 
many who had, in heart, devoted themselves to 
missionary labour was Jens Haven, who, like 
Stach, cherished an ardent desire to proclaim the 
Gospel in Labrador. But as it was not at that 
time practicable to attempt anything for the 
Esquimaux of that country, Jens Haven and his 
brother Peter willingly agreed to accompany 
Matthew Stach. They could make no extensive 
preparations — a boat was almost the only article 
of use and comfort which they carried with them. 

They set out in March, 1758, crossed the 
theatre of war unmolested, and proceeded to 
Copenhagen ; but the ship lying there bound for 
Fisher's Lodge and Godhaab was already so full 
that they could not get a passage on board of her, 
and were obliged to wait a month till another 
vessel, bound for the Danish factory at Zukker- 
top, one hundred leagues northward of their des- 
tination, should sail. At Zukkertop they em- 
barked for Godhaab in their open boat, and 
reached it safely on the fourth day, after a rough 
passage. Their arrival caused great gladness at 
New Herrnhut, where a consultation concerning 
the proposed mission was quickly entered upon. 
Four native families, numbering in all thirty-two 
souls, were selected to be, with the missionaries, 
the founders of the new settlement, for which the 
whole party set sail in July. But the first care 
was to explore the fiord for the most suitable spot. 



200 



MATTHEW STACH. 



The immediate neighbourhood of the Danish 
factory was very congenial to European tastes, 
being well watered, and covered with luxuriant 
grass. But the missionaries knew that, desirable 
as this spot appeared to themselves, it would be 
far less agreeable to the Greenlanders, because 
less suitable for their pursuits. And they en- 
deavoured to find a place which should combine 
these two advantages — a spring which was never 
frozen to the bottom, and a strand which re- 
mained open in winter, and was not at too great 
a distance from the ocean, that the Southland 
Greenlanders, who were mostly accustomed to 
live near the open sea, might not be deterred, 
by the dread of starvation, from frequenting the 
new settlement and hearing the Gospel. No 
such place was to be found in the fiord, excepting 
Akonemiok, an island about three miles from the 
ocean; and though it was so closely environed 
with mountains that they could not catch a 
glimpse of the sun, the missionaries, with their 
usual self-denial, chose this spot for the sake of 
the natives. They pitched their tents there on 
the 24th July ; and the first care of all was to 
erect more permanent dwellings, the missionaries 
contenting themselves for the present with a 
Greenland house, as they had no timber with 
which to erect one after the European fashion. 
So devoid was the site of building materials, that 
they were forced to roll the stones to the spot, 
bring the earth in bags from one place, and fetch 



ENCOURAGING PROSPECTS. 



201 



the sods by water from another. They had, how- 
ever, brought some laths for the roof from New 
Herrnhut, and the sea wafted to them two large 
pieces of timber, such as they needed to complete 
it, Besides a small apartment for domestic pur- 
poses, the house contained a room fifteen feet 
square, which, until they could procure a church 
and school, served for both. The roof was nearly 
six feet high, without ceiling, and supported by 
two pillars ; the laths covered with a double 
layer of sods, cemented with earth to keep out 
the rain, and old tent-skins being spread over 
the whole ; the walls also were lined with skins. 

At first the Greenlanders found it difficult to 
maintain themselves, but afterwards discovered, 
not far from home, a strait through which the seals 
ran into a narrow bay, where they might be taken 
in great numbers. It was not long before some of 
the heathen dwellers in the neighbourhood came 
to visit the new settlers, some instigated by curi- 
osity, but more by a desire to hear the Word of 
God. Most of them lived in places which in- 
volved a journey of some miles over rugged rocks 
before they could reach the mission station ; yet 
they came frequently, especially at Christmas, 
when the Christian natives and their teachers met 
more often for public worship, and celebrated 
their festival with joyful hymns and anthems of 
praise. The first winter was so mild that neither 
storms nor ice hindered the people from going 
out constantly to catch seals, &c, in the neigh- 



202 



MATTHEW STACH. 



bouring bays and creeks, by which means they 
procured abundance of provisions, and were not 
obliged to leave the station until the season for 
the caplin fishery arrived, and all betook them- 
selves to the teeming seas. The missionaries 
who accompanied them frequently found attentive 
hearers amongst the heathen natives who were en- 
gaged in the same pursuit ; and if the mission- 
aries were not present, the heathen frequently 
invited their converted fellow-countrymen to 
come into their tents, and speak to them the Word 
of God. Xor was the simple testimony of these 
native Christians without effect. By it many 
individuals, and even large families, were induced 
to change their abode, and come to live near the* 
missionaries, though the removal was, in many 
cases, detrimental to their temporal comfort. 
Other native families, stopping at the station on 
their migration northwards, heard the word of 
God, their Creator, and the tidings of redemption 
by the blood of Christ, for the first time, and with 
great astonishment, and even emotion. They 
could not, however, decide to stay and settle in 
that neighbourhood; but the missionaries were 
glad that they had got some intelligence of the 
Gospel, and knew where to seek for it when they 
wanted consolation. 

The missionaries had named their settlement 
Lichtenfels, L e., Light-rock, from the colour of 
the rocks which surrounded it. " No one," says 
the historian of the mission, " would conceive 



CHURCH AT LICHTENFELS. 203 

such a nook to be fit for the habitation of human 
beings." Nor was any abundance or variety of 
food to be obtained on the land, reindeer, eider- 




LTCHTENFELS. 



fowl, &c, not frequenting the neighbourhood. 
But the sea yielded cod and halibut, which the 
natives stored for winter provision. The second 
winter was very long, and excessively severe. 
Looking from the mountain tops, towards the end 
of May, the sea was still ice-locked as far as the 
eye could reach. Both missionaries and natives 
were now reduced to great straits, and though not 
totally without food, owing to their prudent fru- 



204 



MATTHEW STACH. 



gality, they were rarely able to satisfy their 
hunger. But no one complained, and each helped 
the others as far as he was able. All were much 
encouraged by the accession, in the course of this 
year, of several heathen families, numbering in 
all fifty-five souls, who came to settle at Lichten- 
fels, "in order," as they said, "to be converted," 
In the third year from the foundation of the 
settlement, the congregation consisted of one hun- 
dred and thirty-seven natives. This increase in 
their numbers made the missionaries long for a 
church in which their people could assemble, for 
they had no place of meeting large enough, and 
bad weather often prevented them from holding 
their services in the open air. Their brethren in 
Europe had not been unmindful of their need, and 
in the summer of 1761 materials ready framed 
for a church and dwelling-house reached the 
mission-station. The captain of the ship which 
had brought them out lent some of his men to 
assist in the erection ; and when the Greenlanders 
had all returned from their fishing expeditions, 
and were duly settled for the winter at Lichten- 
fels, the church was solemnly dedicated to the 
worship of God on the 1st November, being the 
24th Sunday after Trinity. 

After the services of the day were concluded, a 
feast was held, in which all participated, and the 
general spirit of cheerful thankfulness and good- 
will made up for the simplicity of the fare, which 
consisted chiefly of dried caplins. A hymn of 



A PECULIAR RAINBOW. 



205 



praise, composed by John Beck for this occasion, 
and sung with great spirit by the Greenlanders, 
closed the festivities. The church was larger than 
that at New Herrnhut. A dwelling-house of six 
rooms immediately adjoined it, and behind it the 
missionaries had industriously converted a boggy 
piece of ground into a garden. In front were 
the native houses ; on a height, at some distance, 
lay the place of burial. Kidges of rock rose 
around the station, and beyond them the wall of 
ice-clad mountains. 

In the following year the mission at Lichtenfels 
being now, by the blessing of God, well-esta 
blished, and John Beck having come to assist 
Matthew Stach in the charge of the congregation, 
Jens Haven resigned his post. An opening ap- 
peared now to be made for commencing a mission 
in Labrador, and he returned to Germany that he 
might prepare to enter upon his long-desired field 
of labour. On the voyage homeward he was 
gratified by the unusual appearance of a rainbow 
which did not consist of the usual colours, but 
was quite white with the exception of a pale grey 
stripe in the middle. Shortly before the sailing 
of the ship from Greenland, an equally unusual 
but more beautiful sight had been presented to 
some of the brethren who were near the Kook- 
ornen islands, in Baal's Eiver. The islands ap- 
peared, at first, much magnified as if seen through 
a telescope, so that all the rocky points and 
chasms filled with ice, were plainly discernible. 



206 



MATTHEW STACH. 



After some time all the islets seemed connected 
together, and took the shape of trees ; then the 
scene shifting once more, a charming display of 
ships in full sail with flying colours, mountain 
castles with ruined turrets, and numberless other 
objects, rose to view, which, after deluding the 
eye for a short time with their fanciful imagery, 
all either rose aloft, or receded in the distance till 
they vanished out of sight. 

Until the summer of 1763, death made no breach 
in the band of brothers who had solemnly bound 
themselves, twenty-eight years before, to the ser- 
vice of the Gospel in Greenland ; but in that year 
Frederic Bcehnisch rested from his labours. His 
course had been marked by unflagging persever- 
ance. Watchful over everything which concerned 
either the temporal or spiritual interests of the 
people, he could hardly be prevailed upon to 
intermit any of his accustomed duties, even w r hen 
sickness was visibly wasting his strength. The 
latter months of his life were greatly cheered by 
the presence and assistance of his son, who, having 
been educated in Germany, and prepared for use- 
fulness in the mission, returned to take part in 
the work under the direction of his father. A 
severe fall from a rock hastened the dissolution 
of the elder Bcehnisch. Feeling that his end drew 
nigh, he desired that his friend Matthew Stach 
might be sent for. To him he bequeathed the 
care of the flock at New Herrnhut, until addi- 
tional missionaries should arrive from Germany. 



JOURNEY TO SOUTH GREENLAND. 207 

His last earthly duty being now fulfilled, and 
having received for the last time the Holy Com- 
munion, Frederic Boehnisch tenderly bade farewell 
to his wife and children, and departed, full of 
hope and peace, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. 
He was greatly lamented by the Christian Green- 
landers, and many reproached themselves, now it 
was too late, that they had not profited more by 
the instructions of one who had so assiduously 
cared for their souls. 

In 1765, three additional missionaries arrived 
from Europe ; and Matthew Stach, still intent on 
carrying the Gospel to South Greenland, proposed 
to explore all the coast from Lichtenfels to Cape 
Farewell, to discover the fittest spot for the mis- 
sion settlement which he hoped to see eventually 
planted there, and to preach the Gospel in every 
place where he could find hearers. He calculated 
that a year or more would be thus spent ; but the 
many dangers, foreseen and unforeseen, with which 
the expedition would probably be attended, made 
his brethren and himself feel that it was indeed 
uncertain whether they would ever meet again 
in this life. He took an affectionate leave of the 
congregations at New Herrnhut and Lichtenfels, 
and begged their prayers that the Word of God 
might be made known to the Southland heathen. 
He was accompanied by several native converts 
who had originally come from the South, and 
who hoped to find out their kindred and persuade 
them to listen to the glad tidings of a Eedeemer. 



208 



MATTHEW STACBL 



Several montlis were spent in searching out the 
coast; sometimes amid scenes of wild desolate 
grandeur, where 

" Drear Cold for ages 
Thrones him ; and, fixed on his primaeval mound, 
Ruin, the giant, sits." 

But the dreary aspect of wildernesses of rock and 
precipice would often have made the heart of the 
missionary sink, had there not been, even in these 
places, many immortal souls to whom he and his 
assistants joyfully made known the message of 
the Gospel. The spring of 1766 found them in 
the warmest and most agreeable part of Green- 
land, where numerous fiords wound thirty or 
forty miles inland, having on their banks many 
thickets and verdant spots, most refreshing to 
eyes wearied with the monotony of ice and snow. 
Several grassy levels showed traces of ancient cul- 
tivation, and here also were ruins of churches, 
and even fragments of church bells. But the 
heathen dwellers in the land had made the place 
of Christian worship their cemeteiy, and its walls 
were the quarry from whence they had taken stones 
to close up the graves of their dead. Twenty 
miles south of this series of fiords, lay the Eden 
of Greenland, Isle Onartok (Warmth). Here a 
warm spring, perpetually bubbling up, irrigated 
with its streams a luxuriant meadow-ground, ena- 
melled with many-coloured flowers. On the oppo- 
site coast many hundred heathen dwelt, amongst 
whom the missionary found no small number of 



GREENLANDERS* IDEAS OF THE CREATOR. 209 

hearers. That the seed so widely scattered in this 
voyage found some hearts prepared to receive it, 
appeared the next year, when many of the South- 
land Greenlanders repaired to Lichtenfels. 

And here it may be remarked, that although the 
people, in their heathen condition, generally ap- 
peared so engrossed with the cares and labours of 
their hazardous mode of existence, as to have no 
leisure for thought concerning things spiritual 
and immortal, there were some amongst them of 
a more reflective turn of mind ; men in whom 
natural religion had spoken of an unknown God, 
and who were ready to welcome the revelation 
which He had given of Himself. A company of 
baptized Greenlanders conversing together one 
day, some of them expressed surprise that they 
could have spent so many years of life in con- 
tented ignorance and thoughtlessness, neither 
knowing whence they came, nor whither they 
were going. One of the party immediately re- 
plied : " It is true that we were formerly ignorant 
heathens, knowing nothing of God ; for who," 
continued he, turning to the missionaries who 
were present, 4 'could have informed us of Him 
before your arrival ? Yet I have often thought, a 
kayak, with the darts belonging to it, does not 
exist of itself; it must be made with the trouble 
and skill of men's hands, and he who does not 
understand the use of it quickly spoils it. Now 
the least bird is made with greater art than the 
best kayak, and no man can make a bird. But 

p 



210 



MATTHEW STACH. 



man himself is yet far more artfully composed 
than a bird ; who then can have made him ? 
Some of our people say, that the first man rose 
out of the earth. But I could never believe it ; 
for if it were so, why do not men grow out of 
the earth now ? And from whence did the earth 
come ? and the sea, the sun, and moon ? Think- 
ing upon all these things, I became sure that 
there must be some One, far more mighty and 
skilful than man, who had made them all. Yet 
who has heard or seen Him ? Not one of us. But 
I thought there might, perhaps, be, in some p]ace, 
men who had seen Him, or who knew something 
about Him ; and I wished that if there were any 
such, I could speak with them. As soon, there- 
fore, as I heard you speak of this mighty Lord, I 
was glad, and I believed your words." Another 
man added : "I, too, had such thoughts ; for it 
seemed to me wonderful that we were so different 
from other creatures, that they served us for food 
and seemed made for our use ; and yet, although 
there was no creature wiser than man, we often 
felt afraid ; and when we thought of dying, we 
feared lest some evil might come upon us after 
death. I used to think, who can it be that we 
are afraid of? we see no one above us in the 
world. Can there be some Great One whom we 
do not see ? Oh, if I could but know Him, and 
have Him for my friend !" 

In July 1766, the congregation at Lichtenfels 
were rejoiced by the return of Matthew Stach 



PIOUS EAGERNESS OF THE NATIVES. 211 

from his exploring voyage. He was followed by 
some of the strangers whom his exhortations had 
awakened, and who now left their distant homes 
to join themselves to the believers. In the fol- 
lowing year many more came to hear a repetition 
of the truths which the missionary had told them 
during his sojourn in the South. Having re- 
ceived permission to be present at the services of 
the church, they attended with remarkable dili- 
gence, and appeared to be greatly interested in 
them, especially in those of Passion Week and 
Easter. Sixty persons now joined themselves to 
the inhabitants of the little Christian settlement ; 
and a still larger increase took place at New 
Herrnhut, where many of the natives who dwelt 
on the neighbouring shores and islands, and had 
heard the Word of God preached for years without 
giving serious heed to it, now awoke, as it were 
from slumber. Much to the surprise of the mis- 
sionaries, messengers came also from a distance, 
sent by an Angekok, named Immenek, a man of 
wealth and consequence amongst his countrymen, 
to bring him back, as he said, " good words." 
He had grown gray in the practice of his art, but 
had not been chargeable with the grosser crimes 
of which many of its professors were guilty. 
Now, however, he was suddenly arrested in his 
career by an alarming anticipation of future judg- 
ment, and withdrew apart into a solitary place, 
where he continued for several days, none know- 
ing what had become of him. He had formerly 



212 



MATTHEW STACH. 



heard the missionaries preach, but had paid no 
attention to their words ; but they returned in 
some degree to his mind now, and he came out of 
his retirement, resolving to take up his abode 
among the believers. Calling together all his 
family and neighbours, he confessed that he had 
been all his life imposing upon the credulity of 
his countrymen, and declared that he would do 
so no longer. As soon as the return of spring 
enabled him to remove, with his children and all 
that he had, he would go to New Herrnhut ; 
meanwhile he sent three of his people to bring 
back, if possible, a teacher. Two of the national 
assistants accompanied Immenek's messengers on 
their return ; and were overjoyed at the recep- 
tion which they met with, not only from the old 
chief, but from all the inhabitants of his village. 
They were scarcely allowed time to eat or sleep, 
so eagerly did the people press to hear something 
more of God and the Saviour; and it seemed as 
if neither old nor young could be satisfied without 
being told again and again, that " great wonder," 
that the Almighty God came into the world to 
die for fallen man. On the 1st of May, a long 
procession of boats and kayaks was seen steering 
towards New Herrnhut. Immenek, his kindred, 
and neighbours, were all come to learn the way 
of life ; and the population of the settlement was 
augmented by an accession of eighty persons. 
" In these," say the missionaries, " the parable of 
the sower and his seed was remarkably exempli- 



HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE MISSION. 213 

fied." From the hearts of some, the evil one 
snatched away the seed of the Word ; or the 
weeds of earthly care stifled its growth. Others 
received it with joy, but . the ground was unpre- 
pared by any deep conviction of sin, and the 
quickly-springing plant was presently blighted 
by temptation. But in the hearts of Immenek 
and many others, the doctrine of redemption by 
the blood of Christ became the root w^hence sprang 
enduring fruits of righteousness. 

In the year 1771 Matthew Stach closed his 
long and successful labours in Greenland. The 
infirmities of advancing age no longer permitted 
him to take that active part in the mission which 
had been his delight ; and he returned to Ger- 
many, to seek a post better adapted to the feeble- 
ness of old age, yet where his remaining strength 
might be spent in his Master's service. In a 
letter addressed to him shortly before his depar- 
ture, John Beck takes a grateful retrospect of the 
years in which they had laboured together, and 
of the increase which God had granted. From 
this letter also we learn that the large addition 
made of late years to the inhabitants of the mis- 
sion stations was not an unmixed good. " We 
two," he says, " have not yet put off the house of 
clay from whence our beloved Frederic Bcehnisch 
departed, seven years ago, to the presence of Jesus. 
We three it was who, in the year 1735, made that 
solemn vow, one with another, wholly to follow 
our Lord in this land ; to do all, and bear all, 



214 



MATTHEW STACH. 



as unto Him ; and for His sake, and the souls of 
these poor Greenlanders, not to love our lives 
unto the death. He graciously accepted our desire 
to serve Him, and in His unspeakable condescen- 
sion and mercy has crowned our work with bless- 
ing. He has kept His promise, though we have 
often withstood Him ; for which I, for my part, 
am truly ashamed, and do often with tears pray 
Him to absolve me. These congregations, which 
we have seen grow up from the very beginning, 
and to which, according to the ability given unto 
us, we have ministered ; how far do they exceed 
all our early prayers, thoughts, and anticipations ! 
How many times we besought Him, weeping, to 
grant us even but one soul out of this nation ; 
because we knew that even one soul was more 
precious than all the treasures of the earth in His 
sight who had given His blood to redeem it. But 
He stayed not at one. Already hath He gathered 
into His treasure-house five hundred souls who 
had fled to Him for refuge ; and nearly that num- 
ber still dwell in the body at New Hernnhut, 
while here also, at Lichtenfels, are three hundred 
over whom His eye watches. Over these, on the 
whole, I cannot but rejoice, and praise Him daily 
for what He has done and is doing in their behalf. 
For truly we have, in these our congregations 
brethren and sisters in Christ whose heart's desire 
it is to serve Him. Yet while we wander here 
never will the wish cease to rise — Would to God 
ye all might live before Him ! For we have now 



beck's letter; his death — stach's death. 215 

amongst us too many who have outwardly joined 
themselves to the believers, not knowing truly in 
whom they believe ; and by these harm arises to 
the others. In our early beginnings it was not 
so. But now many of our people have come 
amongst us because their kindred were become 
Christians ; and while they conform to the regu- 
lations of the settlement, and are not outwardly 
blameable in conduct, I do not see that we ought 
to exclude them. But I am sure that we do wrong 
if we hastily administer to such careless souls the 
blessings of the Church, and especially if we 
encourage them to partake of the Lord's table. 
For I have observed that such persons, after they 
have been advanced to that privilege, settle down 
careless and contented in their lukewarmness, 
saying in their hearts, ' I have attained all now ; 
there is nothing more for me to do.' " 

The two elder sons of this excellent man de- 
voted themselves to missionary service, and for a 
few years laboured under his direction ; at the 
end of that time the brethren in Europe called 
one of them to join the mission in Labrador. His 
father blessed him for the last time, and sent him 
away. Soon afterwards, in the year 1777, the 
veteran missionary fell asleep, having fulfilled 
forty-three years of patient, faithful labour. His 
last days were marked by much bodily suffering, 
but no cloud darkened the peace and hope which 
filled his mind. He had been permitted to see 
the foundation of a third mission-station, so long 



216 



MATTHEW STACH. 



the object of his prayers and those of his friend 
Matthew Stach. It was situated on the shores of 
a fiord a few miles distant from the Isle of Onar- 
tok, amidst a large heathen population, some of 
whom resorted to the missionaries with readiness. 
Every year saw an increase in the number of con- 
verts. This was joyful news to Matthew Stach, 
who from his distant abode still looked constantly 
towards the land in which he had fed his Master's 
flock so many years. He had retired to one of 
the American settlements of the brethren, en- 
deared to him by the fraternal welcome extended to 
himself and his Greenland converts twenty-three 
years before. He occupied himself in the educa- 
tion of the children ; but his warmest sympathies 
were with the work which was being carried on 
in Greenland and Labrador. The Christians of 
another race who now surrounded him shared his 
affection for their Esquimaux brethren, and in 
the year 1783 joyfully celebrated with him the 
jubilee of the Greenland mission. Four years 
afterwards Matthew Stach rested from his labours. 

The first attempt at planting a mission in 
Labrador was made in the year 1752, when some 
London merchants assisted the brethren to fit out 
a vessel for a trading voyage to the coast. Four 
missionaries embarked in her, and also a Dutch- 
man, named Erhard, who had lately joined the 
brethren, and who, in his previous occupation as 
mate of a Greenland whaling-vessel, had acquired 
some knowledge of the Greenlandic or Esqui- 



ILL-WILL OF THE ESQUIMAUX. 217 

maux tongue. In July the ship arrived off the 
Labrador coast, and anchored in a large bay, 
which the missionaries named Nisbet's Haven, 
after one of the owners of the vessel, Here they 
resolved to settle, built a wooden house — the frame 
and materials for w^hich they had brought with 
them — and, in the cheerful anticipation of future 
labour, called the place Hopedale. Erhard mean- 
while proceeded with the ship farther north, for 
the purpose of trading with the natives. As 
they w ere afraid, however, to visit him on board 
the ship, because of the guns which she carried, 
and pressed him greatly to come on shore to 
them, he went in an unarmed boat, with five of 
the crew, into a bay where there were numerous 
islands. None of the party returned again. The 
boat which they had taken was the only one the 
ship possessed, and the captain, after waiting some 
days', and vainly endeavouring to ascertain what 
had become of them, was obliged to return to 
Nisbet's Haven, and to tell the missionaries that, 
having lost so many of his best men, he could not 
work the ship back to Europe unless they assisted 
him. They could not refuse, though they deeply 
regretted to quit their work even before it was 
begun. The following year the ship returned, and 
the search made for Erhard and his companions re- 
sulted in the melancholy discovery of their remains, 
with evident marks of a violent death upon them. 

This display of murderous ill-will on the part 
of the Esquimaux forced the brethren to suspend 



218 



3IATTHEW STACK. 



their design of planting a mission, though it was 
never lost sight of. But in 1764 Jens Haven, who 
had recently returned from Greenland, resumed 
the enterprise. In England he was introduced to 
Sir Hugh Palliser, Governor of Newfoundland, 
who warmly approved of his design, and imme- 
diately on arriving in the island issued a procla- 
mation, requiring all persons whom it might con- 
cern, to render Mr. Haven every assistance in 
their power. Notwithstanding the Governors 
support, however, Haven had the greatest diffi- 
culty in persuading the master of any ship to 
land him on the coast of Labrador, so evil a 
character did its inhabitants bear. He landed at 
last in the Isle of Quirpont, off the north-east 
extremity of Newfoundland, and had here his first 
interview with the Esquimaux. " September 4," 
he writes in his journal, " was the happy day on 
which I first -saw an Esquimaux arrive in the 
harbour. I ran to him, and addressed him in his 
own language, saying, - 1 am your friend.' He 
was struck with amazement to hear a European 
speaking in his own tongue, but readily consented 
to my request that he would go back and fetch 
some of the chief men of his tribe, as I wished to 
say something to them. Meanwhile, I put on my 
Greenland dress, and met them on the beach, 
inviting them to land. * Here is an Innuit 9 
(countryman), exclaimed they, when they saw me. 
I said, 4 1 am your countryman and friend.' They 
were much astonished, but behaved quietly, and 



MISSIONARIES WELCOMED BY THE ESQUIMAUX. 219 

we continued talking for some time. Then they 
begged me to accompany them to an island about 
an hour's row from the shore, where they had 
left their wives and children, who would like, 
they said, to see me. I hesitated for a moment, 
for by going it was evident that I should place 
myself entirely in their power. But it seemed so 
essential to the commencement of a mission that 
we should treat them with confidence, and become 
better acquainted with the nation, that 1 confi- 
dently turned to the Lord in prayer, and thought, 
• I will go with them in Thy name. If they kill 
me, my work is done, and I shall live with Thee ; 
but if they spare my life, I will firmly believe 
that it is Thy will they should hear and believe 
the Gospel.' I went ; and as soon as we arrived 
they all set up a shout, ' Our friend is come !' 
They almost carried me to their encampment^ 
where I was so closely beset on all sides, I could 
scarcely move, each man pushing forward his 
family to be noticed. I prevailed with them, at 
last, to sit down quietly and hear what I had to 
say. I explained my object in coming to visit 
them, promising that if they were willing to be 
taught I would return again next summer with 
some of my br ethren, build a house on their land, 
and daily discourse with them of the way to hap- 
piness and everlasting life. The next day eighteen 
of the men returned my visit. I took this oppor- 
tunity to inform them of the friendly disposition of 
the British Government towards them, and promised 



220 



MATTHEW STACH. 



that no injury should be done to them if they con- 
ducted themselves peaceably; and to confirm them 
in this assurance, offered them a written declaration 
of Governor Palliser to the same effect ; but they 
shrank back, supposing this writing to be alive ; 
nor could I by any means persuade them to accept 
of it. In the barter which they carried on with 
the ship's crew, they constituted me their arbiter, 
6 for,' said they, * you are our friend.' " The fol- 
lowing year Haven returned to Labrador, accom- 
panied by three other missionaries, one of whom 
had been long resident in Greenland. They were 
welcomed in a most friendly manner by the Esqui- 
maux, who praised Haven for being true to his 
promise, and repeated much of what he had told 
them in the preceding summer. On this occasion 
the brethren had several opportunities of address- 
ing the natives, and preached the Gospel to large 
companies, who listened, at first, with eager curi- 
osity, but when the novelty of the subject had 
worn off, their interest in it quickly subsided. 
Like their kinsmen, the Greenlanders, in their 
heathen state, the people of Labrador cared 
nothing for a subject which did not appear cal- 
culated to assist them in their daily pursuits. 
But they evinced the utmost confidence in the 
goodwill of tlfe missionaries ; and the latter de- 
sired nothing more than to take up their abode 
amongst them. Notwithstanding, however, the 
favour with which Governor Palliser and several 
persons of influence in England regarded the pro- 



MISSION SETTLEMENT IN LABKADOR. 221 

ject of a mission, difficulties were interposed by 
others, which retarded the accomplishment of the 
plan for several years. At length, in May, 1769, 
an order in Council was issued, to the effect, 
" That the land desired in Esquimaux Bay should 
be granted to the Unitas Fratrum, and their So- 
ciety, for the furtherance of the Gospel among the 
heathen, and they be protected in their laudable 
undertaking." Again Haven sailed for Labrador, 
and selected a suitable spot for the future mission 
settlement, considerably to the north of the har- 
bour which had been fixed upon in 1752. He 
formally purchased the ground from the Esqui* 
maux, who testified the highest gratification at 
the proceeding ; and in the following year a com- 
pany of fourteen persons, among whom were two 
missionaries, a surgeon, and two or three men 
well skilled in carpentry and smith's work, laid 
the foundation of the little Christian community. 
The place they called Nain. Some hundreds of 
Esquimaux spent the summer in the neighbour- 
hood of the station, but on the approach of winter 
withdrew to various parts of the coast. Though 
they had constantly visited the settlers, and list- 
ened willingly to the discourses of the mission- 
aries, no lasting impression appeared to have been 
made on their minds. But a few months after- 
wards the brethren were agreeably surprised by 
the tidings that Anauke, one of these savages, 
being on his death-bed, had spoken of Jesus as 
the Redeemer and Saviour of men, had continu- 



222 



MATTHEW STACH. 



ally prayed to Him, and departed in confident 
reliance on His mercy. " Be comforted," said he 
to his wife, who began to shriek and howl, like 
the rest of the heathen, at his approaching end ; 
"lam going to the Saviour." His happy death 
had a favourable influence on his countrymen, 
who ever after spoke of him as " The man whom the 
Saviour took to Himself" 

Another instance of the effect produced by the 
preaching of the Gospel was still more remark- 
able, on account of the extreme youth of the 
person affected by it, and her entire isolation 
among the heathen during many succeeding years. 
Among the natives who abode for a short season 
near Xain were a man and his wife, with one 
little daughter. The child heard the missionaries 
speak of an Almighty Lord, who was also the 
Friend and Saviour of men, and she never forgot 
it. Her parents departed from the neighbour- 
hood, and returned no more. They remained 
contented in their heathen darkness. But the 
little girl found a solitary place where, unknown 
to her parents and her companions, she could go 
and pour out her heart to that unseen Friend in 
whom she had learnt to trust, though she scarcely 
knew His name. The years of childhood were 
hardly over when she became an orphan, and was 
given in marriage by her kinsmen to a man of 
most brutal character, who had already taken two 
wives. The miseries of this marriage did not 
end with the death of her husband. By his 



DISASTROUS SHIPWRECK. 



223 



crimes lie Lad wronged many, who afterwards 
revenged themselves upon his helpless widow 
and children. The unhappy children were so 
miserably beaten that they died in consequence. 
At this time of her deepest distress the poor 
heart-broken mother was found by a country- 
woman who had been converted, and who sym- 
pathized in her sorrow. She conducted her suf- 
fering sister to the missionaries ; and now, to the 
joy of her heart, the poor woman heard again, 
much more at large, of the Lord and Friend who 
had redeemed her. She was shortly baptized, 
and her exemplary conduct recommended the 
Gospel to many. She learnt quickly to read and 
write, and the missionaries looked forward to her 
becoming very useful as a helper among her 
countrywomen. But her days on earth were 
short. By this time more than one little congre- 
gation of converted natives had been formed. 
The experience of a few years convinced the 
missionaries that Nain was insufficient to serve 
as a gathering-place for the Esquimaux dispersed 
along six hundred miles of coast, and it afforded 
them but scanty resources during the winter 
season, when several would have been willing to 
remain there. They resolved, therefore, to esta- 
blish two other mission-stations, one to the north, 
the other to the south. The voyage northward 
was attended with disastrous consequences : the 
ship was wrecked, and two of the brethren perished 
in the waves. The survivors, however, set out 



224 



MATTHEW STACH. 



afresh the following year, and under the conduct 
of Haven began a new settlement at Okkak, one 
hundred and fifty miles north of Nain. A few 
years afterwards the third station was founded at 
Hopedale. In each of these places the mission- 
aries met with many discouraging circumstances, 
and encountered many dangers in the prosecution 
of their work ; but their success, though not rapid, 
was sufficient to animate them to perseverance. 
*' In conclusion," says one of the annalists, from 
whom the preceding particulars of the Greenland 
and Labrador missions have been derived, " we 
thank God who has raised up a seed to serve Him 
in the deserts of the North. If the Lord of the 
harvest, who has sent forth His labourers, con- 
tinue to crown their work with His blessing, we 
may indulge the joyful anticipation that on the 
great day when earth and sea shall render up 
their dead, the frozen rocks and icy sepulchres of 
Labrador and Greenland will yield no incon- 
siderable proportion of their charge to swell the 
choral shout which shall proclaim the finished 
work of the Eedeemer, and the fulness of His 
reward for the travail of His soul," 



THE END, 



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